As the ATX TV Festival – affectionately dubbed the “TV camp for grown-ups” – marks its 15th season, its founders see the moment as both a celebration and a reckoning for the television industry.
What began as a celebratory gathering place for TV lovers and industry insiders in Austin, Texas, now finds itself at the center of a rapidly shifting landscape, where the very definition of television, and especially independent TV, is up for debate.
Festival co-founders Emily Gipson and Caitlin McFarland describe 2026 as a year of reinvention. After navigating the disruptions of COVID-19 and industry strikes, last year’s festival marked a return to form.
This year’s event, which runs Thursday through Sunday, is about building on that momentum, while still honoring the past.
The festival programming leans heavily into that duality. A 20th anniversary celebration of Friday Night Lights anchors the festival with a cast panel including Connie Britton, Kyle Chandler and Jesse Plemons. A 30th anniversary retrospective on Everybody Loves Raymond features star Ray Romano and creator Phil Rosenthal.
Script readings, including a tribute to I Love Lucy, continue a long-running ATX tradition of blending nostalgia with live performance and panels. Bill Lawrence is receiving the festival’s Showrunner Award and hosting a conversation featuring writers, actors and other collaborators from his comedies Spin City, Scrubs and Ted Lasso, as well as his current hits Shrinking and Bad Monkey.
But the festival is equally focused on what’s next. Premieres and sneak peeks — including a screening of Apple TV’s dark comedy-thriller Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed and a look at HBO’s House of The Dragon Season 3 will cast an eye to the future.
The ATX TV Festival and the Indie TV Question
If there’s a central theme this year, it’s the future of independent television.
For the first time, ATX is launching a dedicated indie TV competition, screening original pilots and awarding a best-in-festival winner. But defining “independent TV” has been surprisingly complicated.
What is independent TV these days? A show financed outside the studios? A YouTube hit, or a creator-owned streaming service? Or a low-budget vertical drama? Even the markets are still figuring this out.
“The one thing everyone agreed on,” McFarland says, “is that it’s a show without worldwide distribution.”
That definition reflects a broader industry shift. In an era dominated by global streamers like Netflix and HBO Max, independence is no longer just about budget or creative control, but about reaching the audience.
And this access is the problem.
Unlike independent film, which has long relied on festivals like Sundance and Tribeca as launchpads, independent TV lacks a clear distribution pipeline.
Creators are increasingly producing episodic series on modest budgets — sometimes comparable to indie films — but without reliable paths to audiences.
Traditional networks are less willing to invest, commissioning fewer projects, while streamers have become more focused on profitability and reducing risk. They’re sticking with tried and tested formulas, familiar IP, established showrunners and big-name talent.
As for innovation in TV, “The content is there,” Gipson says. “The question is, how do you get it into people’s hands?”
That challenge is compounded by shifting viewer habits. Audiences are less willing to pay for unknown content stuffed behind paywalls or on demand, yet ad-supported models remain stubbornly unpopular. HBO-style marketing budgets — critical for audience discoverability — are often out of reach for indie creators.
The result is a growing pool of high-quality, independently produced TV that struggles to break through.
Opportunity in Disruption
Still, both Gipson and McFarland see opportunity.
The era of “peak TV,” when hundreds of shows were greenlit annually, has cooled. But with that contraction comes space for experimentation, along with urgency among creators eager to bypass traditional gatekeepers.
“There’s a lot of creative frustration right now,” Gipson notes. “People just want to make things.”
ATX aims to position itself as a hub for creative conversations, bringing together creators, financiers, distributors and fans to explore new models. The festival addresses everything from funding strategies to audience education — an often-overlooked piece of the puzzle.
One panel, with Macaroni Art Productions co-founders Steve Zahn and Rick Gomez, looks at the process of producing an independent TV show, from pre-production to post and everything after.
McFarland says she and Gipson want the festival to be an indie TV conversational track between creatives and people on the business side of producing shows.
“Currently with all the mergers and acquisitions and the major streamers, independent TV is being talked about more,” she says. “Incredible independent television is on the verge of being made. I think some of it’s already being made. The question is, who can crack the code of getting that into the hands of the viewers in a way that they want to digest it?”
Much of the current conversation revolves around verticals, inexpensively made micro-dramas that are easily distributed via phones. They’re getting a growing audience of people willing to pay to watch on apps like ReelShort.
“This is what’s keeping Hollywood alive right now,” Jonas Barnes, founder and CEO of the branded vertical company Pixie USA, recently told MovieMaker. “I would say half of the Los Angeles film industry is working on these things right now.”
While verticals provide paychecks for many creators, they’re often criticized for their low pay and production quality.
“I don’t think the independent television we’re talking about translates into verticals exactly, at least at this point in time,” says Gipson.
She says many are “trying to crack a higher quality version of verticals — yet the thing that makes verticals so successful is how cheap they are to make.”
As McFarland points out, viewers will also need to keep an open mind and recalibrate expectations. Indie TV shouldn’t be judged against blockbuster productions like Game of Thrones, she says. Instead, it requires a new approach to appreciation.
The Next Frontier
The festival is also exploring the role of AI in television production — a topic that remains promising, polarizing and petrifying.
Rather than taking a stance, ATX is creating space for open dialogue around how creatives are using AI, where ethical boundaries lie, and whether AI can reduce costs without displacing jobs.
Gipson and McFarland say that for independent creators in particular, AI could become a powerful tool to streamline production and lower barriers to entry, if it’s used responsibly.
Despite the TV industry upheaval, one thing hasn’t changed: ATX’s emphasis on community.
What sets it apart from other TV confabs is the 50-50 split of industry and consumer attendance. Unlike traditional festivals, where the focus is often on deals, and where talent merely “parachutes in” for a panel, ATX encourages extended participation. Creators often stay a while, watch their work with audiences, attend events, and engage in real-time feedback.
It’s a model that continues to resonate.
“One of my favorite memories at the festival was watching Jason Katims watch fans watch Parenthood, and realizing TV creators don’t often get to sit in a room and hear people laugh or cry at their work,” McFarland says. “That’s incredibly valuable.”
ATX’s intimate setting allows fans and badge holders to interact with TV executives, showrunners and talent. In past editions, Luis Guzmán was spotted belting out karaoke with fellow attendees, while Matthew McConaughey famously held court in the bar during a party for Yellowstone.
The ATX TV Festival enters its 15th year reflecting the broader industry: in transition, searching for new models, but rich with possibility.
If independent television is indeed “on the verge,” as Gipson suggests, ATX may be one of the key places where its future takes shape — not just on stage, but in the conversations happening by the bar and between karaoke numbers.
Main image: An ATX Scrubs panel. Photo by Jack Plunkett
All photos courtesy of ATX