Same way with anime. They used to be 24-26 and then they invented a new word “cour” (I know, probably not new) for 12-14 episodes and acted like series were always that short.

But what was even more annoying is that for a lot of series after about 2010-2013 they would do one cour and leave you on a cliffhanger to try to entice you to go buy the light novels. They used to be fully self contained arcs and stories with 24 episodes to work with.