 Cable has been dying a slow death over the past decade and this is largely thanks to the rise of streaming. American Horror Story might be the perfect case study as to how cable channels and their interaction with streaming essentially helped accelerate their inevitable demise. Let's start with an overview of American Horror Story's ratings over the years. Cable Television was still writing off of the highs of the 2000s when American Horror Story entered the scene in 2011 and our favorite anthology series steadily gained viewers in its first four seasons and the series viewership peaked with the premiere of Freak Show season 4 episode 1 Monsters Among Us. This episode was viewed by over 6 million people live on October 8th, 2014 and the following year Hotel came just short of matching that record pulling in 5.8 million live viewers for its premiere. But as you may see by this graph I would argue that Hotel marks the turning point for American Horror Story. This was not the end of American Horror Story as a rating success, no that comes a little later, but 2015 feels like the turning point for television as a whole. Since 2013 Netflix had started to produce their own original programming for their new streaming service. House of Cards proved to be a hit among adults, but in 2015 Netflix dropped Stranger Things and it feels like nothing has been the same in the landscape of television since then. And with more and more Americans realizing that they could have access to a variety of quality entertainment without having to pay the high prices set by cable providers. Netflix's original programming was competitive and helped to accelerate the movement of people cutting the cord with their cable providers. Soon enough more streaming services began appearing and cable networks began to want to dip their toes into the streaming world, perhaps hoping to keep their brands and shows at the forefront of the younger demographic's attention. Nonetheless from 2015 on cable and network television has seen their viewership following consistently each year. This is reflected in the ratings of American Horror Story and certainly AHS has lost a lot of its core audience over the years. This is not helped by the state of television as a whole, but this is not to say that American Horror Story isn't partially responsible for the decline as well. But in this video I want to focus on ratings and AHS's relationship with streaming. So the first time American Horror Story crossed over into streaming was in season 8 with the much anticipated crossover season Apocalypse. For this season FX decided to use American Horror Story to promote their own new streaming service called FX Plus. Only the way they decided to promote FX Plus was to release episodes of apocalypse early to subscribers of the service. This is one of the most baffling decisions I've seen FX make because they're essentially sabotaging their own ratings and sacrificing one of their flagship shows. Nowadays and even in 2018 the earliest you attempt to get a new episode of a cable show would be the next morning. Hulu was and is still known for being the place to go for next day episodes for a lot of networks. FX decided to kind of do the opposite of this and drop the new Apocalypse episodes on Wednesday mornings on FX before the episodes would later air on FX that night. If I were in FX's shoes I would want to have both feet in the streaming and cable worlds and I would want to use the streaming service to help amplify the network and its brands as a whole. Instead FX took one of their flagship shows and used it to try and get people to subscribe to their new streaming service. Even if this had worked and American Horror Story fans showed up in troves to pay for FX+, they have now just completely tanked their cable ratings because the very people who would pay to see the episodes early are most likely the ones who would have been tuned in at 10pm otherwise. But as I hinted at earlier American Horror Story fans didn't want to pay for FX+, especially when because of FX+, every week the episodes would start appearing online completely for free on the morning before they would air on TV. Personally this was great for me, I admit to using these leaked episodes to get my Apocalypse reviews out quicker but I was clearly not the only American Horror Story fan viewing the leaks. At that point American Horror Story was building a case against watching the show live. Essentially why go through the trouble of paying for cable, watching commercials, and tuning into FX at the exact airtime when you could just go on Twitter and find the newest AHS episode in its entirety on your phone at any given time. But it seems FX learned their mistakes or perhaps it was the restructuring after the Disney merger because the next AHS season would be 1984 and it would not appear on streaming services until after it had concluded. With FX+, becoming FX now, the entirety of 1984 was made available the week following the season finale. This solved the issue of episodes leaking and encouraged fans to tune into FX during American Horror Story's time slot. However, the damage seemed to already be done as 1984's ratings dwindled to lows lower than even Apocalypse. There's a clear trend in American Horror Story's ratings starting with its third season, Coven, where viewership peaks with the season premiere as people are curious to tune in due to the mysterious promotional campaigns in the anthological element of the series. There's always a significant drop in episode 2, but then viewership stays stable or on a pretty consistent decline until about three episodes before the finale, where there is once again a significant dip, before a rebound at the finale episode where viewers are once again curious to see how everything will or will not tie together in the end. For the most part, this trend is visible in every season from Coven to 1984, but as you can see each year, the numbers consistently get smaller and smaller from 2013 to 2019. The fact that Apocalypse looks like a natural decline in comparison to its surrounding season tells us that the damage done by FX Plus itself was not to blame for the death of American Horror Story's ratings. So let's talk about season 10, Double Feature, which suffered from two years without American Horror Story on TV. And the return of FX's flagship show definitely didn't make any waves if we're only looking at the Nielsen ratings, which is pretty much all we have. So like 1984, Double Feature episodes premiered Wednesdays on FX, but unlike 1984, they were available to stream on Hulu the following morning. So this now gives us a very tiny window of exclusivity that FX has given itself, and it's simply not enough for fans to want to pay for cable essentially. In the era of seasons dropping all at once, nowadays most people don't form appointment viewing television habits, meaning they'll watch what they want to watch when they want to watch it. What I'm trying to say is having American Horror Story episodes available on streaming less than 12 hours after they air contributes to a decline in ratings, because even American Horror Story fans who have access to cable may still choose to wait for an ad-free version, especially if it's available by the time they wake up the next morning. But I can see why navigating streaming is so difficult for cable networks like FX. Cable is already dying no matter what, so they're simultaneously trying to hold on to what little live audience they have, while also trying to stay relevant and viable in streaming, where the majority of mainstream consumers are watching television. Before Disney bought Fox, FX's attempt at having their foot in the streaming world was FX Plus, and later FX Now. But starting in 2021 under Disney, FX Future seems to be under the name FX on Hulu. One of the most interesting decisions post Disney was the choice to spin off AHS into its own episodic anthology exclusive to Hulu. American Horror Stories was a clear attempt to appeal to a younger audience than AHS, and it was exclusive to streaming. There's a lot of reasons why I think this series was a huge misfire, but that is a video for another day. The point is, it seems that FX is toying with the possibility of the franchise living on through streaming once its days on cable are over. Sure, maybe the way to go out is by succumbing to the competition, but to say that broadcast television has already died is not quite accurate. There's still a wide enough audience paying for cable to keep it afloat, and there are still network and cable television hit shows, though they do seem few and far between. Before I go on, let me say this video is inspired by a variety article by Gavin Bridge called How Getting Streaming Wrong Costs the TV Industry, which does bring up American Horror Story as an example, but it does focus on a larger pool of series and networks to demonstrate what I'm talking about solely in the context of American Horror Story. The article is linked below if you want some more context, but as the article brings up, one of the few hits of modern cable television is a show called Yellowstone, which has been airing since 2018 on the Paramount Network. And if you're like me, you may not even know this network exists, but Yellowstone premiered with a streaming deal with Peacock, but unlike how double feature episodes were available on Hulu the day after they aired, new episodes of Yellowstone wouldn't be available on Peacock until five months after they originally aired. The difference of a window of 12 hours and one of five months is what drives an increase in live viewership. It's the same thing for movies, for example. If you show a movie exclusively in theaters for six months, it's going to make more money than one that was made available on streaming just 45 days after it began its theatrical run. People are willing to wait a little longer to watch something for free than they are to pay to watch it early, essentially. Having Yellowstone be exclusive to Paramount Network certainly paid off, and just like American Horror Story, Yellowstone also had to take a two-year hiatus because of the pandemic. During this hiatus, Yellowstone and American Horror Story's entire catalogs were available on their respective streaming services, but when they both eventually returned to network television from their hiatuses, Yellowstone premiered to ratings higher than they'd ever had before. Meanwhile, American Horror Story floundered to new series lows every single week, never even hitting the benchmark of one million live viewers. The reason for this is that Yellowstone stuck with being exclusive to television during the airing of the season, where, as we know, American Horror Story was put on Hulu the morning after it aired. Yellowstone and American Horror Story aren't super comparable shows, they appealed to different demographics, and of course American Horror Story was going into its 10th season after the hiatus, whereas Yellowstone was only in its fourth. But also remember, American Horror Story also had its viewership peak in its fourth season, so it could also just be a conversation about the consequences of a TV show lasting more than 10 years. But there is something valuable in seeing that Cable is not completely dead and Yellowstone's release model shows exactly how cable networks can promote live viewership, while still promoting their brands on streaming services. It's clear that television ratings for American Horror Story only account for a small number of its actual audience, but until streaming statistics become more transparent, it's hard to tell just what numbers AHS is actually pulling these days. The truth is there are many things to blame for the decline in viewership, but if we're talking exclusively about live ratings, nothing is more to blame than the death of Cable amidst the rise of streaming. However, the many ways in which FX attempted to interact with the streaming world over the years can claim a large responsibility for accelerating its own inevitable death. Alright, so I've been wanting to do a statistics based video on the ratings of AHS for forever now, so I'm glad that this article kind of gave me a more clear angle to come at it from. For this video, I tried to stay away from factors like the cast, the writing, cinematography, and whatnot and instead focus on the statistics from a wider television perspective, but I could easily do a part two of this video where I hone in on the creative choices that have also contributed to the show's decline over its ten years. So let me know if you're interested in that, if you like this video, give it a thumbs up. You may have noticed I've been on a bit of an extended hiatus, so all of your thumbs up and comments that you guys can give are very helpful to getting me recommended to all my subscribers again, but yeah. At the end of the day, I love American Horror Story as I'm sure you do as well, but any show is going to go through some changes over 10 seasons and it certainly doesn't help that these 10 seasons took place during the rise of streaming, but despite all of the odds American Horror Story lives on, I'll be making videos on season 11 news when it comes out, so subscribe, stay tuned for that. Thank you guys for watching and I'll see you next time.