[Discussion] What do you think about the longer wait times between seasons and fewer episodes per season format of modern TV?

I miss the long shows personally. I didn't really feel it until I finally binge watched all of supernatural a while back and made me realize how much I miss those episodes just dedicated to funny or stupid things and the world building it does. I still laugh at the episode where Dean turns into a dog and tries to shoot a bird who poops on his car. The teddy bear in that episode was also halirious.

The idea of a "bottle episode" came about from producers running out of money and needing to do something cheap with what they had on hand. The long seasons gave creators a chance to try new things. You got backdoor pilots like Star Trek's "Assignment : Earth."
- Yeah, but the ratio of something worth it to pointless filler was really bad.

I would like to have some kind of "recap" episode for me to stream before heading into the new season. If there are years between seasons, I won't remember everything from prior seasons, but I might not want to rewatch 5 seasons before heading into the new one. And yeah, you don't need 12h to tell a good story. Many TV shows are giving you too much filler

The recaps they do are usually a few minutes at best.
I once saw a season premiere of "Cheers." Sam and Diane had broken up at the end of the last season, and they had Cliff do a voice over explanation of what had happened. It was hilarious and informative.
Since we're talking about streaming services anyway, they could do a long [10 minutes] recap with a lot of information and offer it separately from the rest of the season
I think this is a perfect idea for a Youtube channel. Maybe in Alt Shift X's style. Just go through popular shows (ongoing or finished) and recap the big ongoing plot lines, characters, relationships, etc. One at the end of each season, maybe even one at the end of the series just for the sake of completion.
I saw a recap like this for the show Dark and, well, I was still lost through most of it, but it's a good idea. That show's a bad example.
- When getting back into a show with a large break, we usually try and find a video(s) recapping the previous stuff by Man of Recaps. They're usually the right length, hit important points, and are an easy watch.

A show should get as many episodes as it needs to tell the story it wants to tell in the best way possible.

Forcing a show to fill 20+ episodes with a set runtime often leads to lower quality filler episodes. It's also a lot harder to do with the more serialized style that audiences have gotten used to. Babylon 5 showed that it could be done, but it takes a lot of skill, effort and planning.

On the other hand, having only 6 to 8 episodes can be infuriating when a show isn't laser focused on telling a narrowly scoped and tightly scripted story. It can be done, but many shows waste precious time on tangents and subplots at the expense of the larger story. There's less time for character development, foreshadowing, subtlety and pacing. Again, it can be done if it's planned well and the writing is good, but often it just feels like a longer show that's had essential material cut and rushed the plot because they didn't plan for the amount of time they had. We still get the filler, even as they struggle to squeeze the story in. Can be especially bad when every episode has a different writer, and no one seems to know where the focus should be.

I don't like the long wait but I prefer it compared to the lots of episodes every year. The quality is just so much better and there are no filler episodes.

I've always watched a lot British shows so I'm used to it.

Dislike it because I forget what happens, but worst of all it hasn't resulted in better follow up seasons to make the wait feel worth it when it comes back and knowing that it'll be another few years before the next season. House of the Dragon has been the last show I got into since the industry shift towards higher production leading to longer gaps.

And it's felt like higher production has led to worse writing because the shows can't afford to progress the story at a decent pace.

I would much rather have better writing and acting than expensive SFX and costumes. A polished shit is still a shit.

So I don't mind shows having less episodes than they used to (I mean the 24 EP per season ones) but 8 and worse 6 EP are way to short. 10 is good but I think the best is like 12-15 range like 'sons of anarchy'. As for the time between seasons way to damn long It should not be more than a year to new season tbh. It is stupid to think we are going to wait till 2026 for season 3 of HOTD for example.

I think we've hit the other end of the pendulum and release length.

The traditional 26 season episode, each year like clockwork format had a lot of issues. It lent itself to TV shows with an episodic format, and a lot of episodes tended to be forgettable.

In that context, less episodes and more time to produce is great. However it's gotten to the point where I think that philosophy is fucking up show quality in a different way.

First, a lot of TV shows have taken the "less episodes" philosophy as a way to cut costs. There are a ton of TV shows where I feel like important plot developments are either left out or rushed because they have to jam everything into eight episodes. Some are even going to six. Showrunners are blatantly doing this to save time/money, not to produce a lower quantity higher quality product.

Second, a lot of "filler" episodes were actually good for the show as a whole. A good amount of them had subtle character development and world building. This allowed for a much more robust main story. It also allowed writers to try out unique concepts that often ended up being fan favorites. With the eight episode format, TV shows often just end up jumping from major plot point to major plot point in a way that feels empty.

The long time between releases also can ruin the emotional investment in a TV show. With the best TV shows, you often feel some connection to the universe and the characters. Waiting a long time between releases breaks that connection. Stranger Things, the show that in many ways popularized the modern TV format, is the perfect example of this. It's been a decade, two years since the last episode, and everyone is pretty much done. There's probably a ton of lesser shows that died because viewers just moved on.

Finally, some shows should be episodic and have 26 episode seasons. We live in an era of binge watching. Older episodic shows with tons of seasons and episodes continuously outperform the high budget new stuff, yet nobody seems to ask themselves if maybe there needs to be a strategy shift for new content.

I don't necessarily care about fewer episodes if the story is still good, but the long waits mean I've hit the point where I generally won't bother to watch something until it's over. I don't feel like investing myself if I don't know when/if the next part is coming, so now I wait until every season is out to start watching.

It's like being a patient gamer! If you can wait long enough, you can get what you want at a cheaper price, with all the DLC season add ons!
- That's also me. I basically never pay full price - I put games on my wishlist knowing I probably won't even look at them again for a couple of years.

I dislike what is behind it: increasingly greedy media companies squeezing writers and actors. Prior to the rise of prestige shows on cable, writers and principal cast would have a year contract and would get paid well enough to make the one show their only job. Now they need to look for multiple jobs a year, and there’s little to no guarantee for writers that they will get asked back for the next season if there is one.

The war against writers specifically is also part of why there are so many remakes and sequels and adaptations of existing work: writers get paid much less for those than they do for original work.

All that said, I think shows should have the number of episodes they need and should come out at a pace that ensures quality. Rick and Morty and Venture Brothers are both examples of shows with an unpredictable release schedule that did not harm how enjoyable they were.

It depends on the show. A lot of animation and special effects heavy shows are way better as shorter seasons with time to get things right. I also love the number of limited series that tell a complete story in 6-10 hour long episodes or even better episodes that are the length they need to be to tell that part of the story.

While some of the series with 20+ episodes churned out every year worked fine, those tended to get stretched pretty thin and while they resulted in some occasional fun one off episodes the vast majority were forgettable filler.

That filming schedule required to release 24 episodes at 45 minutes a pop was pretty insane. I definitely don't want the crews making the shows to need to return to that brutality

Agreed, and the main reason for 26 episodes per season was to get a show for rerun syndication as quickly as possible which needs 100 total episodes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_episodes
This caused a lot of high stress during filming to be able to to produce that many episodes in such little time.
With streaming, companies like Netflix and HBO/Max are no longer looking to sydicate, so they can produce at their own pace a bit more. It sucks for the audience that is used to more shows, but I rather have a bunch of mini series that have a beginning, middle and end, than dragged out abominations like The Walking Dead. Shows like Breaking Bad that have both have always been very rare.

I dislike it. I'd rather they take longer and release a complete story; it's a trend now to split a season into two or more "cours" for anime and I hate it. The studios are still doing "crunch" and burning out their employees, they're just doing more (shorter) anime in a year.

The wait for Severance has been ridiculous. I was so pumped about that show, but I don’t even care anymore.

I appreciate seasons with fewer episodes as they are forced to focus on good pacing and less "fluff". But longer in between seasons makes you forget the plot. I like anthology series as they don't rely on plot carrying between seasons.

I don't mind the fewer episodes, assuming the story still works.

As for waiting, I don't wanna to wait, but I'd rather have higher quality content, so I'll wait if I have to.

However the split seasons are the most annoying.

As an example, Invincible. Season 1 came out, I think 10 episodes, one a week, great. Then season 2 was 5 episodes in the fall. Then a break for a few months, then 5 more episodes. That wasn't great. The show had already taken ~2 years between season 1 & 2, then to just get part of a season, then a few months away, then the rest. That sucked.

I actually like it. Less episodes works fine for me as long as good stories are being told. I'm awfully busy, I can't dedicate much time to TV. I actually have the same thing with video games. I'd rather dedicate my time to quality self contained experiences like miniseries, than to drawn out mindless background noise levels of infinite content. I got podcasts, streamers and music to fill the silence. I no longer feel the appeal of 15 seasons of 24 episodes of 40 min each for that.

There's too much content. I cannot keep up with even just the shows I know I want to see.

So it doesn't bother me at all. Quality over quantity.

I'd probably mind less if I were younger. Those in the industry are not the only ones trying to "survive 'till '25" - I'm having to make healthier life choices just to make sure I get to see season 2 of Andor.

I never watched the second half of Invincible season 2 because they had a mid season break for an eight episode season and I forgot to go back to it.

I mean do you really think anyone has a positive impression of it?

Honestly, I don't necessarily mind either of these things, although maybe it'd be different if I had more time to watch TV.

Most of my favorite shows have actually been shorter, ever since I started watching TV more seriously in around 2018 or so. Mr. Robot, Succession, Better Things, Atlanta...these shows thrived on short seasons. I like a few shows that have longer seasons too, like 24, Lethal Weapon, Whiskey Cavalier, 9-1-1 and 9-1-1: Lone Star, but I think budgets get stretched so thin nowadays that you notice a real dip in quality in those longer seasons. 9-1-1 fans won't admit this but a lot of the past two seasons have been a trainwreck, and I've sometimes wished that the seasons were actually shorter, with tighter narratives.

Longer wait times, no, but less episodes is definitely better. More than 10 episodes per seasons and you’ll get cruft and filler in there.

Rate of profit tends to go down