FX’s American Horror Story: Hotel is off to a huge start. The recent season premiere was the most-watched episode of any FX series this year in total viewers (9.7 million) and in the key 18-49 demo (6.5 million) over the first seven days of live and DVR viewing.

“I think it’s going well,” FX president John Landgraf told Decider. “If you just look at one week of the show — which all we have today is Live+7 — it’s the third highest-rated show in cable behind The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead. The first week of American Horror Story: Hotel is almost 50 percent higher than the American Horror Story: Freak Show season average last year.”

Those numbers are for “linear” viewership — industry-speak for live and DVR viewing — and do not include views on FX’s website and on the FX Now apps for iOS, Android, Apple TV, Roku, and other streaming platforms. Although last year’s Freak Show premiere was FX’s most-watched episode ever for total viewers (10.6 million) and in the 18-49 demo (6.9 million), Landgraf says the Hotel premiere could eclipse that once the streaming views are included.

“I would put it at 50/50 at this point,” Landgraf said.

The Hotel premiere’s L+7 total viewership, though slightly below the Freak Show premiere, represents substantial total-viewer growth from earlier seasons of the American Horror Story series — up 111 percent from Murder House ($4.6 million), up 77 percent from Asylum (5.5 million), and up 25 percent from Coven (7.8 million).

Decider, which got an exclusive sneak-peak of the Live+7 ratings for the Hotel premiere, caught up with Landgraf on Monday evening shortly after he received the ratings book. In a wide-ranging discussion, Landgraf talked about the American Horror Story franchise, the upcoming American Crime Story series, Monday’s cancellation of Married, the renewal prospects for You’re the Worst (good) and the likelihood of a freestanding, no-cable-required FX streaming app (also good).

DECIDER: I wanted to start with how the season is going. I have thought for a long time that Lady Gaga was aging a lot slower than the rest of us, but I didn’t necessarily have her pegged for a vampire. That explains a lot.

JOHN LANDGRAF: [Laughs.] Yes, it does!

You don’t have all of your streaming data yet for the premiere.

No, not yet. And my presumption is that the non-linear data will grow year-on-year. The VOD and streaming has been going up every year. The premiere airing, which stands now at about 10 million viewers, is probably going to look more like 17 million-ish when you look at the 10 million, plus the encores, plus the 28 days, plus the streaming and VOD data.

Ratings are covered in many ways like horseraces. You want to know if one show is more highly rated than another, and you certainly want to know if a show’s ratings on a weekly basis are going up or going down, and you want to know if a returning series is rated higher or lower than it was the previous season. In many cases, in the early going, I can’t answer those questions. No one can. There’s so many data streams coming in.

It’s a pretty fair guess that some of that 8 percent decrease in total viewers and 6 percent decrease in the demo is a shift from linear to non-linear viewing.

The Live+28 data, which is the DVR data after Live+7, is about 10 percent and seems to go up a percent or two each year. So there’s more delayed DVR viewing in Days 8 through 28 each year than there was the previous year, and each year the VOD and streaming goes up from the previous year. My presumption at this point — talking about the first episode this year vs. the first episode last year — is that the decrease will be somewhat mitigated by the Live+28, VOD and streaming data, which will probably be greater for Hotel than for Freak Show, which represents a change in consumer behavior.

What kind of year-over-year growth have you seen in streaming across all of your programming?

Sometimes in the 50 percent range and sometimes in the 100 percent range. Part of what is fueling that is adoption, and part of it is penetration. We’re still in a situation where homes that don’t have access to FX Now content are gaining it through agreements with our Multichannel Video Programming Distributors, so we still have people downloading the FX Now app. And usage migration to streaming is fueling part of that too.

Is this a show that FX is making available for any non-cable-authenticated viewing?

Cable, iTunes and then DVD.

The show looks very expensive this season. His the show gotten bigger in scale each season?

It hasn’t been a perfectly consistent trajectory. It has depended some on where we shot it. We shot the first two seasons in California, and the next two seasons in New Orleans, and then we moved it back to California. The first two seasons in California, there wasn’t a California tax credit. We got a very substantial value from moving it to Louisiana, including the tax credit and lower labor rates. When we moved it back to California, there was a tax credit in place. It’s an expensive show. Ryan Murphy has an ambitious vision, and we have to build an entirely new set or group of sets every year, and it has an ever-expanding cast.

Is American Horror Story officially renewed for Season 6 yet?

No, but that’s an artifact of when we do things. It’s obviously one of the biggest hits on cable.

How representative would you say American Horror Story is of of broader changes in how people are migrating to non-linear platforms?

It’s a younger-skewing show than our average show, so it is watched more non-linearly than some of our other shows. For American Horror Story: Freak Show, 14 percent of its viewership was non-linear. Fargo Season 1 was at 15 percent non-linear viewership. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 10 was at 18 percent non-linear viewership. On the flip side, Justified was at 6 percent and Sons of Anarchy was at 7 percent. If you look at that a year from now, the low end will be 8 or 9 percent and the high end will be something like 20 or 22 percent.

And that’s going to have something of a ceiling as long as it’s tied to cable authentication.

Yeah, it is. Unless you’re willing to buy it through iTunes or on DVD, there’s no other way to get the content legitimately. Everyone who gets the content is getting is by subscription. The upper limit is bounded at the moment by people who have subscriptions to cable, Verizon, AT&T, DirecTV, Dish, etc.

Are there contractual considerations that would prevent FX from launching a freestanding streaming service like HBO Now or CBS All Access?

No.

Does FX produces enough original programming to support a freestanding streaming service?

Yeah. We produce considerably more than Showtime.

Do you foresee a point in time when FX’s shows would be more valuable on your own platform than on Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime?

I don’t know. I don’t have enough of a crystal ball to answer that. I can tell you that we have very strong relationships with our MPVDs. Obviously, though, there are consumers who don’t have those subscriptions. It’s an open question.

And you could do both. There’s HBO content on Amazon Prime and HBO Now.

That’s right.

Is that something that’s like to happen for FX in the next year? In the next five years?

I don’t know — not because I can’t say but because I just don’t know.

Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story: The People v. O. J. Simpson is scheduled to premiere on FX in February. Have you seen much of it yet?

I’ve seen two episodes, which are magnificent, and I am to see four more this week. I’m told by those who have seen them that they are equally magnificent. It’s a remarkable piece of storytelling based on what I’ve seen and based on what others have seen.

Does it have the same jaw-droppy vibe as Ryan Murphy’s other show, or is it more of a straight drama?

I would say yes to both. It’s based on a very well-regarded piece of journalism [The Run of His Life: The People v. O. J. Simpson] by Jeffrey Toobin.

It’s a great book.

Not everything you see on screen is documented, but it hews very close to the facts. It’s not fanciful in the way that American Horror Story is. It’s a piece of serious journalism and a wildly fascinating story. It’s one of those stories that if a fiction writer made it up, people would say it was ludicrous. It’s incredibly beautifully rendered from a cinematic standpoint, and the casting is unbelievable. Ryan brings an eye and an attention to detail and a scope to what he does that is very present in this, but it’s grounded in a different kind of reality than American Horror Story.

Is the anthology model in vogue now because viewers know they don’t have to be caught up on previous seasons but you still get the benefit of the brand, or is there something else going on?

I think that’s part of it. I liked the idea of American Horror Story from the minute I heard it. I like the idea of a 10-hour or 13-hour story that’s closed-ended. It’s a really interesting story form that exists between film and series. There are filmmakers and movie stars who might only give you a one-year commitment, and — as you said — you don’t have to see every season and get the benefit of the name that evokes some meaning for an audience that may return to it. First and foremost, I think it’s exciting from a creative standpoint. If you look at American Horror Story and Fargo and True Detective on HBO and American Crime on ABC, some really remarkable work has been done that couldn’t be done the same way without this form.

I hope Evan Peters gets his American Horror Story: Outer Space that he wants for next year.

I do too! He’s so good this year — so dastardly!

I have a theory about the comment you made at TCA this summer about 2015 likely being a peak year for the number of original programs. I wondered if it was a recognition that producers have more options now and you’re trying to keep them on their toes.

Mmm, that wasn’t in my thought process. It’s not a bad reason, but it didn’t occur to me. I’ve lived through this whole exciting journey since 1999 when The Sopranos came out. It’s been a really exciting run, and I’m feeling just a level of fatigue on the part of everyone associated. I thought those comments might resonate with the press at TCA because they had been articulating some fatigue at the sheer volume of television.

For those of you who write about it, you help consumers, viewers navigate this complicated business and help guide them toward channels and toward series. There are all these exciting discoveries to be made, and there’s an incredible amount of excitement that to some degree cancels itself out. There’s too many reviews. There’s too many shows. I think there’s plenty of room for debate over whether I’m right, but it’s clearly resonating with some people.

FX announced that Married will not be back for a third season, and You’re the Worst has had similar ratings over its two seasons. Are there particular things that would make You’re the Worst likelier for a pickup?

Yeah. You’re the Worst is one of the most critically acclaimed comedies on television, and universal acclaim is something that’s very difficult to achieve.

It’s certainly a show that I like a lot.

It’s meaningful to us. We tried very hard to get Married considered and then re-considered, but the critics never liked it as much. If you look at two shows with comparable ratings but one is critically acclaimed and the other isn’t, that could be a deciding vote.

Do you have anything ordered for web-only as some other networks have done?

No. If you see what just happened with Community [which Yahoo streamed at a sizable loss], a premium-style series on the web that would be supported only by advertising is just ludicrous. You can make money selling ads against a show for $30,000 an hour. We’re spending a hundred times that and more. We have a model that is far better for monetizing the quality at which we wish to work.

[Watch American Horror Story: Hotel on Hulu or FXNOW]

Scott Porch writes about the streaming-media industry for Decider. He is also a contributing writer for Biographile and The Daily Beast. You can follow him on Twitter @ScottPorch.

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