10 Showrunners Who Define TV Now
They don’t just make hits — they set trends, move markets and tell Hollywood what audiences actually want
I cover TV from L.A. I wrote about the Amazon TV mess as Peter Friedlander takes over, scooped Vince Gilligan’s overall renewal with Sony TV and Julie Plec & Andre Agassi’s tennis drama in development at Amazon. I’m lesley.goldberg@theankler.com
What defines TV culture right now? Is it The Studio, with its too-close-for-comfort look at Hollywood’s own madness? The Last of Us, with its dystopian video game IP roots and Gen Z heroes? Or that Canadian thriller nobody saw coming that’s suddenly topping Netflix?
There’s no single answer — and no single metric to prove it. Streaming killed the old scoreboard. Minutes watched? Completion rates? Awards? Spinoffs? Every platform plays by its own rules, and that makes defining a “hit” harder than ever. And in the streaming free-for-all era, a “hit” is whatever a platform says it is.
But what we can measure is influence: the showrunners whose work sets the tone for what’s selling, what’s getting greenlit and what everyone in Hollywood is trying to imitate. After consulting with agents, top network and studio/streaming executives and more prominent figures in the industry to compile this list — all sources were promised anonymity so they could, yes, pitch their own people but more so in order to speak freely about talents outside of their walled gardens — these are the 10 creators (listed alphabetically) whose shows define both the business and the culture of TV right now, whether they’re reviving genres, minting stars or proving that broadcast still has juice.
Below, meet the storytellers who move markets and shape the zeitgeist, plus the reasons why each creator rose to recognition and what TV stakeholders secretly say about them behind their backs (some juicy stuff!).
Inside this year’s Power 10:
The top takeaways from this exclusive club for making and selling TV now
What executives and agents said about why these creators get hired
The creator who made broadcast cool again
The two 69-year-olds quietly running half of prestige TV
The “unicorn” who cracked YA for streaming
The HBO auteur who turned “rich people in jeopardy” into a global genre
Why some of TV’s most prolific creators have my eternal respect but didn’t make my list