The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Aug 28, 2026 · 37 min · 14 segments
Television's golden age is over, replaced by one that’s decidedly more, as they say, “mid.” Audie and Ari weigh in on whether TV really got worse, the industry's post-prestige identity crisis, and the…
Hiro MuraiGuest
Audie CornishHost
Ari ShapiroHost
So I think where I would like to start this conversation with you, Audie, is like, where is television right now? Because we've talked about an era of prestige TV.
I think it helps to understand that prestige TV, the way we're thinking about it, and I'm just going to be arbitrary here.
The anti-hero, better and bigger production values, things that feel more cinematic.
Serials, where if you didn't watch the previous week, you might not know what's happening this week.
And then we sail into the prestige era coming off of Breaking Bad and Mad Men and from there.
and when people talk about peak tv it's because at one point um i think there were upwards of 400 scripted television shows in
production so just so
people understand when people say the industry has contracted that like fewer shows are being made a lot of shows were being made just a lot of shows
were being made but in the first half of 2026 hollywood produced 100 fewer shows right than they did in the first half of 2025.
This is the fourth year in a row that Hollywood has been producing less and less television.
But that still doesn't quite answer the question of what kind of TV are we seeing? I
think everyone thinks now that the streamers are spending less, that maybe there's a little bit of a quality issue.
Last year, I think I saw Matt Damon, he was on a um tour promoting his film the rip with ben affleck and this was on netflix it was a huge deal that they had done netflix air quotes right these this pair of filmmakers coming together again but guess what since they're filmmakers in their own right they were only too happy to discuss the notes they got right and matt damon went on a podcast and he said you know it was interesting doing this because there are certain beats you have to hit in an action movie sometimes that might be doing the big explosion at the end.
So I think where I would like to start this conversation with you, Audie, is like, where is television right now? Because we've talked about an era of prestige TV.
I think it helps to understand that prestige TV, the way we're thinking about it, and I'm just going to be arbitrary here.
The anti-hero, better and bigger production values, things that feel more cinematic.
Serials, where if you didn't watch the previous week, you might not know what's happening this week.
And then we sail into the prestige era coming off of Breaking Bad and Mad Men and from there.
and when people talk about peak tv it's because at one point um i think there were upwards of 400 scripted television shows in
production so just so
people understand when people say the industry has contracted that like fewer shows are being made a lot of shows were being made just a lot of shows
were being made but in the first half of 2026 hollywood produced 100 fewer shows right than they did in the first half of 2025.
This is the fourth year in a row that Hollywood has been producing less and less television.
But that still doesn't quite answer the question of what kind of TV are we seeing? I
think everyone thinks now that the streamers are spending less, that maybe there's a little bit of a quality issue.
Last year, I think I saw Matt Damon, he was on a um tour promoting his film the rip with ben affleck and this was on netflix it was a huge deal that they had done netflix air quotes right these this pair of filmmakers coming together again but guess what since they're filmmakers in their own right they were only too happy to discuss the notes they got right and matt damon went on a podcast and he said you know it was interesting doing this because there are certain beats you have to hit in an action movie sometimes that might be doing the big explosion at the end.
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