Someone once said that conventional wisdom is just the lies we all agree on in order to help our world make sense.
And that certainly seems to be the case when it comes to the conventional wisdom of those working in the TV industry that seasons with 22 or 23 episodes is the goal the industry should be working towards returning to as quickly as possible.
Usually when I am pointing to one of Joe Adalian's Buffering columns on Vulture, it is because I find myself agreeing with him. This is one of those rare occasions when that is not the case. But you should still read his piece. In part, because based on the conversations I've had with other people in the industry in recent months, you probably agree with him.
In the post entitled "The Looming Catalog Crisis," he argues that the success of Suits on Netflix shows that the streamers should be making more shows that have longer seasons and more seasons overall:
One of the hottest shows on streaming this summer isn’t some critically-adored masterpiece or a bold new statement by an international auteur. Nope, the warm-weather winner this year might just be new-to-Netflix reruns of Suits, a basic cable drama which lasted nine seasons and produced well over 100 episodes during its USA Network run — in other words, exactly the kind of decade-spanning hit the streaming giant has helped make all but obsolete. While Netflix loves acquiring older shows with hefty episode libraries (think Grey’s Anatomy or Seinfeld), when it comes to original content, it can be a little more, shall we say, promiscuous — lots of relationships, little long-term commitment. And because so many other platforms have followed its lead, even successful series on streaming now regularly disappear in as little as three years and typically leave behind no more than a few dozen episodes. They’re literally not making shows like they used to — and that’s a big problem.
I encourage you to read the entire piece and while I do disagree with the premise, I'll also admit it's an argument I hear from people inside the industry on a regular basis.
My perspective is that from the streamers point of view, licensed catalog titles perform very differently than original series. Part of the reason they over-perform is that suddenly, viewers who have heard of the show but probably never watched it the first time around (which statistically, is most of the subscribers on Netflix) are suddenly confronted with a 100 or 200 episodes of a well-made series. That's going to drive engagement, encourage bingeing and skew the show's performance. You could take a show like Suits, release one season every six months and while it would likely do very well, spreading it out over a number of years would likely lead to a similar number of viewers, but distributed across a much longer time frame. Fewer spikes in viewing, less topping-the-charts hype.
There’s nothing mysterious or complicated about what could be done to avert this potential problem: Streamers should just start making shows that film more episodes every season and, if audiences embrace them, they should allow them to run for six, seven, and eight seasons instead of two or three. That doesn’t mean giving up on big stars and cinematic production values or even shows that come and go after 40 episodes. Netflix and HBO have raised the bar for what television can be and audiences clearly crave — and will pay for — big spectacles or the chance to see Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez solve mysteries with Meryl Streep. “You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube,” one senior streaming programmer says about the desire to go back to a world where all hit shows cranked out 22 episodes a year.
I have no doubt that pretty much everyone in either the WGA or SAG-AFTRA would love to get back to a 22 episodes a year world. But it's important to remember that production model was dependent on a specific set of factors that weren't just unusual for the American markets. It also wasn't the norm in most other parts of the world.
In the old linear TV universe, there were financial incentives to produce a large number of episodes per year and as many seasons as possible. Because the studios took a loss on every episode until it went into syndication, there was an incentive to produce enough episodes to resell it (typically at least 100) and the more episodes you had of a show, the more money you were going to make overall. And while the bins of TV history are filled with lots of shows that only lasted one or two seasons, the dynamics of the business meant that even a mediocre show could make everyone a lot of money. I believe in the business they refer to that as the "Coach Effect." And that is a specific infrastructure that only existed in the U.S. linear TV market.
But in the streaming business, none of those incentives exist. Certainly not at Netflix, which doesn't license out its original content. But you don't see episode orders longer than 10-13 episodes at any streamer.
Part of it is the economics of streaming. Data shows that nearly all the viewing for an original series takes place in the first 45 days. And that having more episodes of a show just means that most subscribers will watch all 23 episodes in that 45-day window instead of the typical order of 10. There's no real financial upside to more episodes for the streamers.
There have been some efforts by streamers to produce more traditional feeling scripted dramas - a streaming take on a network procedural. But as has been the case with traditional comedies, audiences have been resistant to the idea. Although no one has a clear sense of why that's the case.
I also want to be clear about something else. Yes, in the abstract, having long seasons not only provides more money for writers and actors, but the process helps make true mentorship possible. All of those are good things and the current WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes are driven in part by the economic changes brought by shortened seasons and mini-sized writers rooms. But none of that means that shortened seasons can't be produced in a way that provides the underpinnings the industry needs.
While I could ramble on about this forever, I'll leave you with one other thought. This paragraph is worth highlighting, because it illustrates how deeply certainly beliefs are held in the industry:
But recognizing that TV is different now doesn’t mean accepting that all the changes of the past decade have to be considered permanent or insisting on a one-size-fits-all approach to program models. The same suit who says we’re not going back to the pre-Netflix world also says he’s been sensing an openness among his fellow execs to an evolution in how they think about the lengths of both seasons and series. “Some people are starting to push back against these accepted truths,” he says. “Consumers really liked having 12 or more episodes of a show every season. And we all enabled Netflix to change that.” TV critic and Burn It Down author Maureen Ryan echoed those thoughts earlier this week on the social network formerly known as Twitter: “U.S. TV was a money-printing machine for decades because people like 12- to 22-episode seasons that allow for meaty character development,” Ryan wrote.
Ryan is one of the smartest journalists I know and I respect her take on things. But that storyline of what happened to the TV industry is only slightly accurate. But it's the one nearly everyone believes, because it matches how we feel about the direction the industry is headed. It's a form of nostalgia that only remembers the facts about the industry that fit our inner narrative.
An example of this was something I saw yesterday on social media. Someone was discussing the success of Suits and arguing the problem was that the USA Network had walked away from its successful "Blue Sky" drama formula. But as I reminded them, the truth was that USA rolled out a lot of new shows in that Suits period and none of them stuck for more than two seasons:
