FX sets debuts of 'Feud,' 'Americans,' 'Atlanta'

PASADENA, Calif. — FX opened its semi-annual sessions with TV critics Thursday with its exhaustive tally of scripted series, and as any viewer knows, the numbers keep going up.

By its count, there were 454 scripted series on broadcast, cable and streaming networks in 2016, up from 420 in 2015 and a mere 266 in 2011.  The number of basic-cable series actually declined to 181, from 187 a year earlier, and there was one fewer pay-cable series (36 in all), and five fewer broadcast series.  But Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and other streaming services doubled their output, to 92 last year from 46, accounting for all of the increase.

The latest entrant? Apple Music, which The Wall Street Journal reports is eager to expand into scripted fare. "We welcome them as competitors," said FX Networks chief John Landgraf.

In FX news, Atlanta, the acclaimed comedy from Donald Glover, won’t return for a second season until 2018, so Glover can play Lando Calrissian in the upcoming Star Wars anthology film about Han Solo. Don't worry, though: FX has signed the show’s writer, producer and star to a wide-ranging development deal for new projects.

Also sitting out 2017: Award-winning American Crime Story, which focused on O.J. Simpson’s murder trial last year but will next focus on Hurricane Katrina and, six months later, a third installment on the murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace. The Katrina project is being rewritten, and will be filmed after the Versace season, though it will air first.

FX has set a March 5 premiere date for Feud: Bette and Joan, Ryan Murphy’s limited series about the battles between Joan Crawford (Jessica Lange) and Bette Davis (Susan Sarandon), which erupted during the making of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and continued long after.

And on March 7, The Americans returns for its penultimate season.  The animated series Archer will move to smaller FXX on April 5, part of a quest to bolster that network, which has other comedies (You’re the Worst, Man Seeking Woman) but gets its biggest ratings boost from reruns of The Simpsons.

And Murphy’s American Horror Story has been renewed for an eighth and ninth season, beyond the upcoming seventh cycle due later this year. But as usual, the concept for the anthology series is top secret.