America has never had so much TV, and even Hollywood is overwhelmed

The TV business is facing its biggest explosion of new productions in the medium’s history, sparking a billion-dollar arms race between established TV networks and a deep-pocketed insurgency of online streaming giants. That boom is reshaping the industry from Atlanta to Hollywood, where even washed-up actors are suddenly in high demand and open studio space is the holy grail, said Henrik Bastin, the executive producer of “Bosch,” a gritty cop drama on Amazon. Craftspeople, who once went months without a gig, are now fought over and recruited for shows that have become so ambitious, expensive and intricate they’re “like making a movie each week,” Bastin said. “There’s literally no studio space in the L.A. area right now. Cameras and equipment are flying off the shelves,” Bastin said. Studios, he added, are locking in every cast and crew member they can with a clear message: “Don’t go anywhere.”

Desperate for buzz and worried over their survival, those networks are spending heavily in hopes of launching a prestige franchise — a “Game of Thrones” or “Breaking Bad” — that can captivate distracted audiences and pierce America’s increasingly saturated marketplace for must-binge TV. But the wild spending is stoking fears about whether or when TV’s financial bubble might burst. The glut of scripted dramas and comedies has dramatically boosted budgets, but it has not solved the industry’s most dire dilemma: The lack of a functioning business model for a new era of TV.