Does anyone else dislike how short modern TV shows are compared to how long they take to get released?

[Princess Viola]

I really dislike it.

And here's the thing: I don't mind short seasons and I also don't mind shows that have a long run (as long as they don't overstay that welcome) but the problem for me is modern live-action streaming series are so expensive and time consuming to make that there's pretty much always going to be something like a 1-3 year gap between seasons.

I've never seen the show so I can't comment on its quality but I seriously cannot believe that Stranger Things has been on the air since mid 2016 (so nine and a half years) and yet it's upcoming final season in a few days is only season five and the show is gonna have a grand total of 42 episodes.

42 episodes over nine and a half years is utterly ridiculous to me.

We had 176 episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine over six and a half years. I wish we could go back to yearly seasons, they don't even need to be full 24-26 episode seasons like you traditionally got in the US, like I already said I'm okay with short seasons I just wish they were released on a much more consistent basis. I would legit love lower budget TV shows in order to get that.

 

[AGXStarseed]

Yeah, I've seen a fair few people complain about this, and they do bring up a fair few good reasons:


01. Loss of Momentum/Fan Enthusiasm
In the past, you'd usually get shows - or at least US shows - putting out around between 20 to 24 episodes a season, usually released weekly so it would last around 6 months, and you'd get a new season of it every year if it was successful, meaning the next season could start just 6 months after the previous one concluded.
As such, by the time the hype for the previous season was dying down, it'd kick back up again with the news of the next season and people excitedly discussing what they thought/hoped would happen in the show and what would be next for their favourite characters.
It kept everyone invested, helped fans to keep clear on what had happened previously and ensured good (or at least decent) viewing figures when the show returned.

Nowadays, a fair amount of TV series seem to getting chopped down to a meager 8 episodes or less - so they feel more like a miniseries - and yet somehow it's now taking those in charge years to make new series despite having far less material to film.
As such, the show's momentum ends up falling off a cliff and plenty of fans get bored and move onto other things; especially with people having much shorter attention spans, YouTube and numerous streaming services all trying to get their attention with new movies and shows (combined with the releases of new books, games, etc.), along with there been plenty of older books, shows, films and games that audiences can catch up on.
We all have a finite amount of time and attention, so the long waits between seasons don't help in keeping us invested before the next one comes along. For the fans who truly remain dedicated in their wait for the next series, said series still has to spend time reminding other viewers who watched the show in the past and decide to check it out again after seeing it advertised - because "Oh yeah, I vaguely remember that show; I wonder if it's any good now?" - of what happened previously just so they can be caught up.
It's for this reason that shows like House of the Dragon lost so many of their viewers between seasons; people get distracted and move on because it just takes too long for them to stay interested in what comes next.


02. Aging of Actors
The problem with the longer time it takes to make shows nowadays means that a lot of actors are clearly getting older, and it's especially noticeable with a lot of younger actors.
Bringing up Stranger Things since Princess Viola brought it up, that show first aired back in 2016 yet it's taken nearly a decade just to get to Season 5. As such, that "plucky band of kids/teens" are quite clearly a lot older now and it breaks the immersion badly when its still supposed to be a group of teenagers yet they're starting to look like they're in their 30s.
Granted, there's been plenty of movies that have used older actors in the role of school/college kids (a good example been the 1976 film Carrie), but at least most of them looked the part and were just there for the one movie; a TV show is a different kettle of fish and can be very off-putting when what you see and what the show is trying to tell you don't match.
If this show had been made using the original model of making shows, it probably could have been finished by 2021 or 2022 at the latest. As is, it isn't, and it's only causing more issues now.


03. Lack of Episodic Storytelling
While this obviously isn't something that can be done by all shows, a lot of shows in the past had episodic storytelling; no singular path to a grand finale but rather just individual adventures and self-contained stories that you could put on and watch anytime. Some were weird and wacky, some creative and thought-provoking and some just simply enjoyable and entertaining without trying to be anything grandiose.
It meant the show's writers could have fun with different ideas and themes with less restriction, while giving the audience a variety of episodes to choose from without the show becoming stale. Not every episode was good in that regard (especially those whose plots basically resulted in the episode been a clipshow, or sometimes when one of the actors wanted to write/direct an episode and it didn't work out), but for every "clanger" you at least had plenty of other episodes to choose from that you did enjoy.
On top of that, since there was no over-arching storyline, there was less worry about missing out and kept the show interesting.

Now, every TV show feels like it has to serialized and connect to a single over-arching storyline; meaning you can't afford to miss an episode because you might miss something important.
It stops being entertaining and instead becomes boring at best and exhausting at worst to the point of feeling like the TV equivalent of 'homework' - especially with the shorter seasons and the length of time taken to make new ones these days; it falling back to the earlier point of the next season then needing to remind everyone who decided to come back of what actually happened previously.


There's obviously others, but the three reasons I've talked about above are the main issues.

 

[FayetheADHDsquirrel]

I don't like it.

 

[Outdated]

There's obviously others, but the three reasons I've talked about above are the main issues.

Another big issue from a foreign point of view is a trend in US produced shows that has gotten progressively worse and worse over the last few decades.

The amount of screen time wasted on nonsense instead of actual program.

To start with look at the difference in time spent on a program's title and introduction between the US and the UK. US produced shows will have a title and intro of over 3 minutes long, where as the average British show will spend less than 30 seconds on this. Especially on a weekly program where you're seeing it all the time, what's the point of such big long intros?

Then with US produced shows you have another 3 to 5 minutes at the beginning of the show telling you what happened last week, and at the end of the show another 3 to 5 minutes wasted telling you what's going to happen next week. Leave out time for a few adverts as well and your average half hour show has about 9 minutes of actual program.

To people who don't suffer severe short term memory loss or ADHD this "what happened last week" isn't just annoying, it's downright condescending and insulting.

Because of this US shows have become a lot less popular over the last couple of decades and this means less money coming in and smaller budgets with which to pay quality actors and writers.

You'll notice that US trend of really long intros in a lot of youtuber's shows too. Not all producers from the US do it, but mostly only producers from the US do it, and the general public hate it.

 

[Judge]

It's heartbreaking. Particularly given those of us who went through decades of at least 26 episodes per series unless they were cancelled before the end of their season.

It's economically understandable why many series only run ten episodes each season, but then the amount of time that goes by is so long that I feel separated from what was happening, even when a minor recap happens at the beginning of a new season.

Every new season I feel like, "Why bother?'

However I don't see the studio system changing a thing. It works for them, just not for us.

 

[velociraptor]

I feel cheated now that seasons are so short. 20 episodes at least, please.

 

[Dagan]

Being part of the industry and even a cog in some of the writing processes of the past, I can fill you in on what I know:

It used to be that the budget decided everything on the front end. The "greenlight" budget, if you will. The bible asked for from the writers room was per said budget, and that was that. "Bible" in this context meaning that they had an outline of what each episode was going to cover in regards to a main plot point in the chronology of the overall story being told, but we writers were allowed to tell "individual / episodic" stories with their own beginning/middle/end/wrap ups in each episode as needed to reveal said plot point. The better the bible of the story structure, the better the season and show lengths would be as a result. The budgets being set in stone and never having worries of them being trimmed also resulted in better end results. Networks were pretty solid / good about this. Only when actors started to hold out for bigger paydays did anything start getting derailed.

Fast forward from the heyday of the 80's / 90's / 00's (when I first entered) and through several guild strikes, the whole recession debacle of 2008 and such....and there isn't but maybe 50% stability anymore, even when it comes to streaming networks and what you would think are set in stone budgets. No budgets are absolutely safe. It's their own faults, too. Pay attention to how many producers (company names and individual persons) are listed in the credits of shows (even movies), and that's a big clue as to how any of it is even getting done at all. It's insane sometimes. I need to start listing some shows specifically, for examples:

Daredevil: Born Again - Most of what transpired in production is public. The initial dailies of what they filmed was testing poorly and just wasn't up to par with what they knew/feared the fans would accept. They scrapped it and reset everything, re-filmed it, etc. New money, new writers, new crew, et. al. was part of the hard reset to get it all right. Two major guilds were on strike at the time, as well. It was pretty extensive and time consuming - it was testing the patience of every investor involved (and this is another problem that I will explain in a moment), and there's contractual limits on when these folks are to be repaid, mind you. It forced the release of the "product" per a certain timeframe, and to make that deadline, the editors became the real heroes (which isn't rare, anyway - I can get into this in a moment, too). The editors were given the biggest problem to solve overall, and I think they should win every award imaginable. They gave us shorter episodes, but they also gave us more of no-nonsense content and next to nothing as far as "filler episodes" compared to other seasons.

Producers (aka INVESTORS) are an issue this day and age. It used to be that only a few producers and/or one studio were bankrolling (budgeting / financing) a film or TV show. Pay attention to opening / closing credits of a film or TV show, now, though. The names of production companies / individual producers are many. It's stupid how many are involved, but that's how the game is played, now. It's not huge chunks of funding from a handful of folks anymore at all. It's smaller bit sums from a whole village, basically. These people all have contracts, of course. They are "investing" into said project with clear deadlines of when and how much they will be getting returns. Even if the whole thing bombs out, there WILL BE returns. These folks are considered the elites, and they are never treated like anything less. Anyway, it used to be a few per project, but with it being more people involved, there comes more options of if they decide to disagree, pull out their funds, have emergency reasons for withdrawals, etc. It can come down to just that they are raging narcissists who want control, and if they have put in the majority of funding, well, they just get what they want (or the whole thing is shutdown - money is refunded). The overall point is that....this alone can be what prevents the original bible / story of a TV show getting condensed and shortened or just short-lived and ultimately cancelled entirely. The whole thing might have been this big, sprawling epic of a show with so much creativity put into it.....and could have become a real mess that even the editors couldn't fix. It could have come down to not having enough money leftover to pay any editors worthwhile to fix anything, either. This is why I mentioned editors being the real heroes many times. Editors are the last who see and form the final projects you get to consume. Yeah, directors or producers may be sitting down in the editing labs at the same time with the editors, but it ultimately comes down to what they can or can't do with what they've only been handed to work with. And, make no mistake, when it gets into the hands of said editors, about 99% of the time, the budget is used up - no reshoots funded - that's all there is to work with - good luck. Skills and passion for the project are hopefully going to win out for everyone.

 

[Dagan]

I broke this apart to explain more:

Most of what I have and still do continue to write is per ghostwriting gigs. Ghostwriting doesn't mean that I only write horror, haha. It's means I am a "ghost" on the project entirely. You'll never know I had anything to do with, nor will I even know if another ghostwriter was also working on the project. Everything is per NDA signings and then some. All very legal and hush, hush. It isn't just writers involved at times, either. "Ghost" directors, producers, editors, fx work done, etc. are things that happen, too. Why do said jobs occur? Most every single time it comes down to someone being upset and won't budge - won't do it. Sometimes, it comes down to not wanting to ask the producers / investors for funding changes that the director or star talent absolutely need fixed, and they are going to fund it themselves (fear of asking for more money for fixing stuff). And so it goes, I or another like me will get offered said gigs. The pay will be small, but it happens so often....it can add up, if you want it to.

To say it another way in different detail, try this: The writer of a film that is mostly shot and finished is butthurt big time because the director (maybe even the producer) want changes / reshoots (almost always because the finished film just won't work - it'll suck bad). This writer has been paid already, too. I have to explain this real fast - "above the line" - Above the line is per the budget sheet of a film being produced. Only the above the line listed folks are who get paid day one of the cameras rolling (yeah, everyone else is getting paid only on the back end of all work done - filming completed). Directors, writers, actors and on set producers are who get paid above the line only. Back on point - this writer has been paid already and doesn't have to budge to do more. Their contract is complete. You can't force them to do more, and if they are offended and don't want to write more....they ain't gonna. The fix is to hire a ghostwriter for the gig. Rinse / repeat per other above the line positions regarding reshoots.

Anyway, this obviously forces a time crunch, and by the time all of said reshoots get to any editor....it works or it doesn't.....it helps the show or film be better.....or again, the editor is cutting, trimming and saving everyone the best they can. You get what you get.

 

[Misery]

Another big issue from a foreign point of view is a trend in US produced shows that has gotten progressively worse and worse over the last few decades.

The amount of screen time wasted on nonsense instead of actual program.

To start with look at the difference in time spent on a program's title and introduction between the US and the UK. US produced shows will have a title and intro of over 3 minutes long, where as the average British show will spend less than 30 seconds on this. Especially on a weekly program where you're seeing it all the time, what's the point of such big long intros?

Then with US produced shows you have another 3 to 5 minutes at the beginning of the show telling you what happened last week, and at the end of the show another 3 to 5 minutes wasted telling you what's going to happen next week. Leave out time for a few adverts as well and your average half hour show has about 9 minutes of actual program.

To people who don't suffer severe short term memory loss or ADHD this "what happened last week" isn't just annoying, it's downright condescending and insulting.

Because of this US shows have become a lot less popular over the last couple of decades and this means less money coming in and smaller budgets with which to pay quality actors and writers.

You'll notice that US trend of really long intros in a lot of youtuber's shows too. Not all producers from the US do it, but mostly only producers from the US do it, and the general public hate it.

Yeah this rather sums it up for me.

There's just so much dead space, so to speak. It's like... okay... can I skip forward here, okay, oh they're doing a recap again... skip forward... oh geez why are we now seeing the stupid title... skip... ENOUGH THEME SONG... okay now the characters are on screen but nobody is doing anything, for the love of puppies can we stop standing around dramatically... how in the world are we at end credits already.

And then there's the writing and pacing. My favorite stupid example is from some medical drama or other... like these paramedics show up to help this old guy who is sort of just writhing on the ground, and they poke him a bit and spout some random jargon they may or may not have made up on the spot, and then one of them flips the dude over and says, and yes this is what is actually said, "He’s got a colostomy bag, alright everyone back up, we’re going to have to intubate him". After a gross moment that I probably shouldnt attempt to put into words all of these "medical professionals" step back and dramatically stare for a bit (old guy still dying, nobody else is moving, because OMG BAG). One of them then informs the guy just how horribly he might die if they dont do something. Everyone keeps standing there.

Ya know I thought I might be misremembering that, and I went and looked up the scene, and... nope. It's just like that. If you've ever seen any medical drama shows, you've probably seen a lot of increasingly stupid scenes like that though.

My favorite Youtube comment about that scene: "I love how this man is dying by literally choking on his own poop and the first responders take time to throw out one liner jokes and smile."

And that's exactly what I tend to expect out of the TV these days. Just writing of that kind of quality. With like the worst pacing and timing possible on everything. Just as braindead as possible. It's like they need to fill space within the time slot, but havent quite figured out what to fill it with, so they just STRETCH everything. And if that means making everyone stand and dramatically stare at a bird or something to get an extra minute by, so be it.

Also, commercials. I dont know how it is outside of the US, but the commercials here are BAD. I dont mean the content of them. I mean the sheer number per program. I have, a few times recently, seen a bit of TV stuff that family was watching when I went in there to play with the dogs a bit.

And omigod it is UNWATCHABLE. Like... how? How does anyone ever watch that garbage? You can have a way too long set of commercials, and then like 4 minutes of show, and then 4 minutes of more stupid commercials... what in the heck? Why in the world does anyone tolerate that? I'm 100% checked out with the FIRST set of commercials (that again take WAY too long), let alone even more of them.

I ended up switching purely to Youtube many years ago because of stuff like that, and I see it's only gotten WAY worse since.

Not that Youtube doesnt have issues, but at least with Youtube I have adblockers and SponsorBlock, I havent seen a single ad online in who knows how long.

I also watch stuff on Crunchyroll sometimes, but that's a paid service. No ads there AND there's a convenient "skip intro" button that shows up at the start of whatever (because anime shows also have way too long openings that are exactly the same every episode).

 

[Judge]

This also reminds me of some of the Irwin Allen tv series that never seemed to survive more than three seasons. To find out so many years later that they weren't cancelled for ratings, but rather for budget problems.

Particularly "Lost in Space" and "The Time Tunnel". Where even the budgeting of recycling props and special effects wasn't enough to save them. They were just too expensive to produce.

Makes me wonder what it would cost to produce 26 episodes of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" ?

But it continues to alienate me towards even the shows I really like when I have trouble recalling the story line of a past season nearly a year ago. Then again I see the studio "suits" grinning and suggesting everyone always refresh their memories by watching the reruns. Another reason why I suspect this will remain the status quo indefinitely.

"Always the dollars. Always the dollars." - Joe Pesci, "Casino"

 

[velociraptor]

@Dagan thank you for the fantastic explanations. Much appreciated.