TBH I don't mind if a modern season is 12 or so episodes, so long as those episodes are rock solid! One downside to 22-24 episode seasons is they obviously phone in a couple episodes, have some filler including the ever-dreaded clip-show.

True.

Today, we're lucky to get half that. Eight is more common.

nO ONe waNtS tO woRK AnYmORE!

I'm pretty sure it was less than a year between seasons too.

None of this wait 2-3 years and wonder if its actually been cancelled.

A discussion yesterday about netflix shows dropping 50% of their audience between season 1 and 2 was talking about this. Shows used to run 9 months and have 22 - 26 shows in that time. Then there'd be a 3 month hiatus before you got another 22+ episodes. A streaming show would take 7 season to get to 50 episodes, and with a year or more between 8 episode chunks it'd take 15 years to get there.

I don't miss filler episodes or saving the budget for sweeps, but I miss shows I love constantly producing new content.

Well yeah, they could crank out a whole episode in like a day back then. These days people expect every episode to have the quality of Hollywood movie.

The nature of tv has changed. The gap between tv and movie has largely closed. People lament that we are moving away from traditional Hollywood movies, but I'd argue that we're more moving away from traditional television with premium tv now taking the place of movies in many ways.

It's not that people like stories less, they just seem to prefer a series of 1 hour movies told in 8 parts over a single 90 minute plotline.

Television used to be sooooo much different than Hollywood. There used to be almost no overlap in skills or technique. I used to work in TV, and what I used to do just isn't done anymore. The closest thing out there now to old tv is Saturday night live. They still kinda do it in that style.

The only modern show to approach that was 20 episode Prodigy seasons, but those were 1/2 hour episodes (less without commercials), so it works out to be the same amount of content as a 10 episode Strange New Worlds season.

A 16 episode season would be a nice compromise for a more detailed story and character development while not being much longer for those who bury their faces in phones or other devices and can’t be bothered to listen to more than 8-10 episodes. 👀 /s

A little extra breathing room compared to what’s common now would be great.

Bottle episodes meant people didn't need to be invested in years long sagas. People don't know what they want. They're force fed fancy wine, thinking they've become connoisseurs by their own choice, but actually it's box wine from Walmart. They get fed up and quit after a season or two, but they don't know why. They tell themselves it's because the writers or studios are doing it wrong. Of course that's true, but not for the reasons they think. Give people something easier to digest in small bites and they'll continue watching shows.

The same problem happened to Marvel. At this point nobody has kept track of the dozens of movies and all the plot lines. They lose viewers by attrition. They gain none because nobody is watching hundreds of hours of movies to catch up. Bottle episodes and standalones make it easy for people to start and stop at any point.

Standalone content got a derogatory label "filler". So people hate it because they're told to.

More than a few low quality episodes, a couple flashback episodes, and extensive repetition before commercial breaks. It wasn’t good TV.

Yeah, but actors and film crews who worked those syndicated TV shows will tell you how tortorous the work schedules were. Labor protections are a big part of the changes in episode production, and it's a good thing.

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.

Its not the brevity, it's the extended delay between them

That's 24 with Christmas and Halloween specials. Or a clip show, ugh.

Half of them were filler and three of them were compilation recap episodes and they ran for 22 minutes each not counting ads, but yes, that's what USA TV series were like.