Here’s the state of the industry: 15 years ago networks would program 35 weeks a year, filling the remaining time with reruns from domestic off-network syndication deals. Now they're programing 50 weeks a year, with virtually zero reruns. Which brings us to how much SVOD has changed the game: having Hawaii Five-O doesn’t quite work on TNT when you can also find it on CBS and Netflix. Sell too much downstream, and a ton of FX shows start popping up in just about every OTT provider; sooner or later all that stuff is everywhere at the same time. It's hard to build a subscription base just like that. Sure, Amazon might claim limited exclusivity to something like Fargo, but is that really enough to make anyone sign up? This is the difference; this is what HBO realized when they set the template for all the content creators who would follow; HBO knew that original content was the way to go.

There’s no doubt there’s tremendous need for fresh product. On the surface, higher demand undoubtedly seems like everything a creator’s wet dream. After all, there was a time when everyone was so concerned that all the work would go to reality TV; today the increased number of outlets translates into a surfeit of writing jobs. But it goes without saying that the opposite is now also true: There’s not enough available talent – and paying viewers.

“There’s price elasticity,” says Amazon Studios alum Morgan Wandell. “There’s an inherent limitation to the number of services people will subscribe to… in addition to their cable.” Which is mildly disturbing, since the subscription revenue model supporting high level programming – like Netflix and Amazon’s – is crazy expensive. The SVOD model revolves around bingeing. Cable is all about stickiness; HBO wants you to watch 12 episodes of Girls over a 12 week period, rather than binging in two days – it needs to win audience engagement so they’re invested enough to roll towards the next episode. Netflix wants you to be inundated in stuff that you’d never finish – it constantly needs more original content so you’ll stay. And as great as any service is, there’s still no clear, paradigm-shifting, competitive edge that warrants customer loyalty to any particular provider: Most people watch their favorite shows on HBO for 3 months, drop it, and pick it up again. Because there are so many options out there (many free), it boils down to a bare-knuckle fistfight for viewer attention. And viewer attention is more fragmented than ever before. With all these new outlets to funneling out content from, a lot of content gets buried in the haze: Vimeo on demand catalogues 20,000 films from 6000 creators. Machinima buckets 30, 000 channels into its Quasi-Orwellian ad-share rev farm state. And look at Twitch: a click past the top 25 games on the homepage nets you 18,000 videos streaming Minecraft alone – all with harrowingly similar thumbnails on screen. How do you make a TV guide of that?

Granted, there’ll always be 13 year-olds clamoring for (MOAR!) content on Twitch, but discoverability is becoming a serious problem even for superusers in this clutter. When was the last time you discovered content? Do you even go to the homepage of Youtube.com anymore? I don’t. Which brings me to the issue of the amorphous mass.

Well, the amorphous mass is a little like Wave 40 when the press of zombie bodies start to feel claustrophobic, and you can neither see where you’re going nor where you are shooting. That about sums up the state of today’s television business: Half-surviving a flood, half-groping around a dark, foggy mess. With such a rapid, torrential demand for content in new and emerging platforms, it’s all new frontier. And like zombie mode, there’s no clear direction where this is all heading, or how to quantify how far we’ve come. Measurability, then, is the damned enemy.

When I first heard Treyarch was adding “Zombie Mode” to its military shooter Call of Duty many years ago, I was wildly enthusiastic. The wave-based cooperative mode promised the thrill of the unexpected. One moment you’re fighting undead Nazis, then fending off flaming hellhounds, then shooting ghosts. It sounded like a better version of Lost, because the premise seemed to guarantee emotional confliction: Not only did the game force friends to battle under increasing stress, but the undulating tides of enemies would keep escalating in number. I imagined it would be like jamming Jack, Sawyer and that bald hunter guy into a den of polar bears and forcing them to emote at gunpoint. This would be perfect television.

However, Zombie Mode was a failed model, and this is why: Too much, too quickly, with no end in sight. At some point, I would turn into a nerve bucket; I couldn’t suppress the amorphous panic at the prospect of an endless, uphill battle, like sort of an aimless Valhalla for the dead. Even during the more disorienting parts of Lost, there was always the reassurance of direction; if two people are gathering fruit to Michael Giacchino’s “The Good Shepard,” I know they are about to make a breakthrough and unearth a secret. But with Call of Duty’s zombies, there is never palpable progress; at the end of a match, we’d merely see two players, firing their guns with sheer terror into the growing hordes, unloading clips with chattering abandon.

Without perspective, any deluge can seem overwhelming. Zombies don’t need a full mag to kill; a single shot in the head will suffice. So one tries practicing trigger discipline. But when the zombie tide swells out, it all just starts turning to shit; clean headshots turn into spray n’ pray. But what players really need to do is banish primal fear, instilling a cold precision that will foster organic adaptation and exploitation of the environmental factors. Granted, it is not an easy feat. Staying level-headed is tougher than pulling the trigger. But an exploding barrel, for example, shot with the right timing, could turn the tide of battle. We don’t need to hit all the zombies at once; we need to hit the right target, with the right ammunition, at the right time.

Perhaps this is why I think the television business is so enrapturing; it’s a trade more embattled, mercurial and unfathomable than all the zombie mobs out there. That feeling of claustrophobia, crowded in by that insurmountable fear of being overwhelmed – that’s the target audience. All this abstract deconstruction is necessary, and it’s necessary because the TV business is excessively complex. In a market that’s fragmenting faster than a lard tub at a fat club, you're going to need a shotgun rather than a rifle to hit any sort of traction. But no one awards marksman badges to someone with a blunderbuss; it’s the confirmed kills that count. So how do you make an impact in all this clutter and still nail an audience? It’s not a simple answer. Because the landscape is virtually unknown and constantly changing. Just look at the velocity of new platform releases ramping up – I watch Periscope twice a day now, and I’ve never even heard of Periscope a month ago. The Snapchats, the Meerkats, and Big Frames – floodgates have opened with Multichannel Networks (MCNs), curation platforms, and mobile applications. Seismic shifts from a focus on network to cable have dramatically transferred to Over the Top services (OTT); 80% of primetime internet traffic is Netflix, with Showtime and HBO Go gunning for slices of SVOD pie. When there’re so many players in the ring, with so much competition, all struggling to get compelling content on your platform, it becomes easy to ditch the tactical jabs for roundhouse punches 30 seconds to the bell. And in a business where 95% of everything fails, you better be hauling.