Data Underload  /  , ,

Television Genres Over Time

By Nathan Yau

IMDb catalogs television episodes with up to three genres. Here’s how the distribution of genres has changed since 1945, when there were only a few shows available, up to present day, when there are more shows any human could ever need.

Prints are available for a limited time in the FlowingData Shop.

Comedy and drama (and combinations including them) still set the foundation, but reality TV, news, and talk shows make up a larger share than they used to.

Below are the individual genres split up, which makes it easier to see rising and falling patterns. Again, television episodes can have more than one genre, so the sum of the values below won’t sum to 100 percent.

 

To be honest, I haven’t watched actual TV shows in years. I’m mostly a basketball and cooking videos type of a guy, but this seems about right? There sure are a lot news and talk shows. Maybe let westerns have another chance.

Chart Types Used

Area ChartStacked Area Chart

Become a member. Support an independent site. Make great charts.

Join Now

Learn to Visualize Data See All →

How to Untangle a Spaghetti Line Chart (with R Examples)

Put multiple time series lines on the same plot, and you quickly end up with a mess. Here are practical ways to clean it up.

How to Visualize and Compare Distributions in R

Single data points from a large dataset can make it more relatable, but those individual numbers don’t mean much without something to compare to. That’s where distributions come in.

How to Use Packed Circles in R

Adjust coordinates, geometries, and encodings with packed circles to make various types of charts.

Detecting and Plotting Sequence Changes

Change detection for a time series can be tricky, but guess what, there’s an R package for that. Then show the results in a custom plot.