In the post-peak TV era of the content business, it’s become ever more crucial to invest programming dollars wisely, to ensure that the series produced are met with robust audience demand. This is not always possible, of course. But it is possible, in the increasingly data-driven landscape, to identify underserved audiences or genres where audience demand is out of line with supply.
One key area, for example, is content led by and focused on female characters, termed “women-centered stories” in Luminate’s Film & TV metadata. An analysis of TV series released from 2025 through Q3 of 2026 found that while women-centered shows accounted for just 11% of premieres during this time, they drew 17% of U.S. minutes streamed for these titles, per Luminate Streaming Viewership (M).
This disparity, while not massive, shows women-centered series command more viewing time than the volume of these shows would suggest. This in turn suggests there is demand for such titles that may not be met by the current supply. And digging more deeply into this category reveals which subgenres (or “arenas”) can be leveraged to better serve the streaming audience — in other words, where the supply-demand gap is largest.
For instance, dramas for women are particularly undersupplied. The “serialized drama” category — e.g., The Handmaid’s Tale, Yellowjackets — accounted for one-third of women-centered series released in 2025 and 2026 but 44% of minutes streamed for such shows.
This 11-point gap indicates significant unfulfilled demand for serialized dramas starring women, which is, admittedly, no huge surprise. Consider, for instance, the consistently strong viewership for the now-concluded Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu (it was the platform’s most-streamed title in 2025) and the breakout success of Furious, another women-centered serialized drama, on the same platform earlier this year.
In a TV landscape where female-led dramas are still rare enough to be remarked upon, there is clearly a healthy appetite for them among audiences. Indeed, another one of the largest demand gaps in this analysis belonged to thrillers, an arena that shares strong overlap with serialized dramas.
The biggest gap of all, however, was the 16-point disparity for literary adaptations, which accounted for nearly a third of minutes streamed but just 16% of supply.
This is partly explained by massively watched outliers such as Netflix’s Bridgerton and, again, The Handmaid’s Tale. But the value of page-to-screen titles, which often come with a built-in audience, should not be underestimated. Amazon certainly isn’t doing so, having recently reorganized its TV studio to better serve its YA adaptations. (See also another Netflix title, East of Eden, which shot to the top of the charts upon its Oct. 1 release.)
Ultimately, however, the key takeaway here is bigger than any one subgenre. This is a framework that can be applied to any category of streaming content and help identify meaningful gaps between what streaming audiences want and what they’re getting.
