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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.

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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.

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