TV Surveillance

Two-hundred sixty-three.

That’s (roughly, I’m about 97 percent sure) the number of new series the four major broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC — have aired since the 2005-2006 season, according to the in-depth research I’ve done over the past month using the Futon Critic’s great archives.

Do you know how many of those series have lasted longer than one season?

Seventy-two. Or barely 27 percent.

Longer than two seasons? Twenty-eight, or a smidge over 10 percent.

And people wonder why all the “great,” award-winning television series are found on cable.

My reason for scouring through five years of broadcast television was to discover any trends in both content and character portrayal innovations.

After the 2004-2005 television season, one that featured the debuts of a number of broadcast’s biggest innovators and to-this-day successes such as “Lost,” “The Office,” “Desperate Housewives,” “House” and “Grey’s Anatomy,” the broadcast networks found themselves in transition.

Could they react positively to the innovations in narrative, structure and genre? And if so, could those attempts actually work?

The answer? Obviously, not really.

In terms of content formatting, the most popular across all networks since 2005-2006 is the one-hour drama series. One-hundred-and-seven of those have hit the airwaves in that time, and only 32 percent of them have lasted more than one season. Wow, big shocker there.

The next most popular formats? Competition reality series (40 aired, 3 percent succeeded past a season), single-camera sitcoms (33 aired, 40 percent success rate) and multi-camera sitcom (26 aired, 27 percent success rate).

The outburst of single-camera sitcoms speaks volumes to the influence of “The Office” and “Arrested Development,” which is probably the only true change found across this whole time period.

Competition reality series are cheap but overwhelmingly horrible failures. So the next time NBC trots out something as dumb as “My Dad is Better Than Your Dad,” remember all the evidence points to it being unsuccessful and know that it’s all about the money.

On a network-by-network level, the lack of surprises continues to be the trend. NBC has the lowest success rate in terms of series lasting more than a season, as they’ve aired 77 and only 21 percent have topped one year. ABC’s right there too, with 85 series and a 25 percent success rate.

The obvious schism between those two networks (162 series between them) and the CBS-FOX combo (101 series) proves what we already know: the latter two have dominated the last five years.

But wait, could there be innovation in terms of what kinds of people we see in scripted programming, even if the programs themselves are generic?

Well, no. The most popular trope that television series have centered on over the past five years just happens to be the family, followed in order by cops, young and single professionals, females and lawyers. Again, little to no innovation there, either.

Sadly, both for me because I spent so much time researching this just to have my assumptions confirmed and for the audiences at large, broadcast television is struggling and has been for a while now.

Perhaps external factors — lack of audience response, technology, the economy — have forced the broadcast powers to go generic and broad. Or perhaps that’s just an excuse. Based on what you’ve seen in the past five years, which one sounds more true?