TV Seasons?

[PKTrekGirl]

TNG, DS9, and VOY all had several 26 episode seasons, but I can't find many other shows from the time period that did. 26 seems like a lot.

I believe The X-Files was another show that aired tons of episodes. When that show was at it's peak in the early seasons, they were airing 26+ episodes a season, I bet. I'm too lazy to go downstairs to check my DVD sets, but I remember some of those seasons being really long. But the quality was there.

As for the main topic, I'm sorta with Temis on this one. If a show is good, it's good, and whatever it will be replaced with will likely not be. So I'd rather have more episodes, even if they are 'filler', since 'filler' of a good show is still better than the best episodes of most crap on TV.

And I'm not sure that mediocre shows would benefit by a shorter season. If a show has a weak premise or is being poorly written, poorly acted, or whatever, it will likely be so whether there are 20 episodes or 13. I mean, can poorly conceived or acted characters actually improve with fewer episodes? I don't think so - I just think there will be fewer episodes for people like me to NOT watch.

The key thing to remember here is that the networks still have 52 weeks a year to fill, and a finite bucket of advertising dollars to do it with. If shows are shorter, they will also receive smaller budgets, it would seem to me...because that same bucket of ad revenue STILL has to cover 52 weeks of programming. It will just be with more shows.

In fact (and this is the accountant in my speaking), I would guess that if shows got cut down to 13 weeks, budgets would get slashed by A LOT...because all the shows they will now have to generate to fill the time have their own 'overhead' (back office costs) associated with them that cannot be avoided (that's why they call it 'overhead'). And everyone knows that economies of scale are only there...if you have SCALE. With shorter shows, you won't have any scale at all, and the administrative costs of just 'show running' would be a lot higher for the network overall . Thus, less money for what we actually see on the screen: good actors, good writers who write good scripts, sets, special effects, etc.

Or did you guys think that these shows would get the same budget for a 13 week show as for a 22 week show? Because I really doubt that can possibly be the case. I mean, the math doesn't work.

 

[Cicero]

There was a time when shows got 26 eps and then it went down to 22 eps...should shows only get 11-13 eps?

You’re probably too young to remember the 1950s and early ’60s, when TV series typically had 39 episodes per season. Thirteen of those would be re-broadcast as summer reruns, unless there was a summer replacement series.

And the great radio series (Dragnet, Box 13, Richard Diamond, etc.) ran nearly year-round - roughly 50 weeks per year, usually - even when they featured major movie stars as leads.

 

[Jetfire]

@PKTrekGirl

I am still trying to grasp what a "good" show is you and Temis keep bringing up...I mean I think all the shows I watch are "good" and also think they have several eps that are nothing more than filler or just are mediocre...with about 13 great eps out of 22 or so eps total.

I am sure if a show only has 13 eps it wouldn't have the budget of 22 eps...but I am sure it would get enough to do what it needs to turn out quality episodes. Networks will always fill in the gaps with something...even if it is crap...look how well reality TV does.

 

[Cicero]

^ I'd suggest the second season of The West Wing as a "good" show. A handful of episodes in the first half of the season are below the season's overall level of quality, but they were still better than almost anything else on television at the time.

 

[mswood]

Back in the 80s and 90s when writers were competent and capable of sustaining 26 episode seasons that was fine but anymore these days they struggle to put out 13 decent episodes a season so shorter tighter seasons are definitely the way to go.

Seriously you thought the average show in the 80's and 90's produced good material to cover 26 episodes. Yikes.

 

[startrekwatcher]

Back in the 80s and 90s when writers were competent and capable of sustaining 26 episode seasons that was fine but anymore these days they struggle to put out 13 decent episodes a season so shorter tighter seasons are definitely the way to go.

Seriously you thought the average show in the 80's and 90's produced good material to cover 26 episodes. Yikes.

Yep--shows back then had very consistently enjoyable seasons--Dallas, The Golden Girls, Melrose Place S2-5, The Equalizer, Profiler, Quantum Leap, Murder She Wrote, Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, Hunter, Roseanne, TNG esp 3-6, Friday the 13th The Series S 1/2(this show only ran 3 years), X-Files pre-season 6 etc. More often than not I knew I'd be entertained week in and week out.

Shows these days are wildly uneven or burn bright then fizzle out a la Heroes in S1 or BSG S1. They simply aren't consistent heck even within a single episode the hour is a mixed bag with some good and some bad on a lot of these shows.

 

[cardinal biggles]

Those shows you mention were the cream of the crop, the ones that rose to become the "classics" of their day. For each one of them, there were another ten shows that were utter dross and were canceled; the lucky ones became Trivial Pursuit questions. Every generation thinks that the current entertainment of their day is mostly crap, and the previous generation's was the greatest thing since canned beer, whereas if you take a step back, you'll find that they're all pretty much the same as to the proportion of shows that made a lasting impact and shows that were crap or filler or both.

That's not to say the landscape of TV production isn't undergoing some pretty radical change right now, but when it all shakes out, you'll probably find the same proportion of quality to crap that's always been there.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

@PKTrekGirl

I am still trying to grasp what a "good" show is you and Temis keep bringing up...I mean I think all the shows I watch are "good" and also think they have several eps that are nothing more than filler or just are mediocre...with about 13 great eps out of 22 or so eps total.

I am sure if a show only has 13 eps it wouldn't have the budget of 22 eps...but I am sure it would get enough to do what it needs to turn out quality episodes. Networks will always fill in the gaps with something...even if it is crap...look how well reality TV does.

Well, I think you are missing the larger picture.

Okay. So you don't want to see the 'filler' episodes of your favorite show. So let's cut those out and give you only 13 episodes.

But the network still has to fill those hours - it still has to fill about 28 hours of prime time a week, 52 weeks a year. And it has to fill those now freed-up hours with more shows.

But remember, each show has overhead costs - things like marketing development, legal costs, accounting, not to mention in-show fixed costs such as set design, etc. In short, a bunch of items that still cost pretty much the same amount of money, whether you make 13 episodes or 23. Because of this stuff, the per episode cost of making a 13 episode season show goes up...because the 'fixed costs' are spread over fewer episodes.

AND, in addition to that, we have to add more full 'official' shows to the schedule...because while they can stretch a 22 or 23 episode show (between the holidays, summer vacation, sporting events, and other specials) to last a year, they can't stretch a 13 episode show out that long. So now they have to add more full shows - also with high per-episode fixed costs because they too have all those administrative costs attached to them that are not substantially reduced by a shortened season.

However...ad revenue over the year is still pretty much the same. So the same pot of income has to now cover all this additional expense.

So where is that gonna come from?

Here's a hint. It's not gonna come out of the salaries and bonuses of the big executives. And it can't come out of legal, accounting, or anything like that. I mean, you can't do 'less accounting' - the job is the job. So the only place it can come out of are the operating budgets of the shows themselves. And that is never a good thing - especially if we are talking scifi shows. Cheaper actors...less money for CGI & effects, less money for location shooting....

You see where I'm going with this?

And then, after all that, you have no assurance whatever that whatever the network decides to fill the time with is going to be worth that time either. Sure...you may lose those 9-10 'filler' episodes from your original show (although if 9-10 episodes a year out of 22-23 are 'filler', I would argue that that is not a very good show. ) and now are down to 13 streamlined ones. But after those 13 weeks are over, you are looking at a 9 month wait before your show comes back from hiatus (at which point, I would be going "What show?"...but that's just me...). And so what do they put on to fill your time while you wait? 'Monday Night Raw: The Cooking Addition'? 'America Loves Yet ANOTHER Fucking Singing and Dancing Show'? 'Law & Order: Crosswalk Guards" or some shit like that? I mean, lord knows your chances are pretty high of it being something that might make you wish to high heaven you had your 'filler' back!

I mean, give me filler episodes of shows like LOST or NCIS any day of the week over several more weeks a year of 'Dancing With The Has-Been...erm...I mean, Stars' or "Survivor: Downtown Indianapolis" (because that's the only place they haven't been yet).

I think that the 13 episode format works well on cable, where the money is there to present reasonably decent shows year-round. But on the networks, budgets are already tight...and making them still tighter, just so you can jump out of the frying pan of watching a few 'filler' episodes of your favorite show into the raging fire of watching 'Tori Spelling and her husband travel across the country in their RV and argue about where to stop for gas in between talking on their cell phones to people you can't even fucking HEAR'....well....please give me a nice big steaming pile of filler, thanks!

 

[Jetfire]

I understand what you are saying but the TV landscape is changing and I think networks are going to have to adapt...and who is to say there aren't shows that can be good but because of the limited amount of time that alot of 20+ ep shows fill they don't get a chance to air? I think there should be a middle ground here...TV isn't what is was 30 years ago..in many ways it is not what is was 10-15 years ago.

 

[BlobVanDam]

13 episodes always feels too short a season to me for a genre like scifi. For comedy it's not too bad, as long as the quality is kept high. Generally I like closer to 20 episodes a season for any show. A good show has no problem filling more episodes, and a good show's "filler" episodes are often still good, and a welcome change of pace between the bigger episodes.
Anything less than 13 episodes seems ridiculous to me. The only British show I watch is The IT Crowd, and if you blink you'd miss it. Even after 4 seasons, they've got one real season worth of episodes. Then you have to wait almost an entire year for more. I don't know if that's a budget thing perhaps, but it's silly to me.

 

[Jetfire]

My biggest problem really isn't the filler eps...but how the 22 ep season is chopped up...you get like 10 or 11 eps in the fall/winter another 5 or 6 eps in Jan/Feb and then the rest of the season finishes in April and May...too many breaks...I really would like to see the series straight through or just have one break.

Again I am just ranting and have no clue what I am talking about...so ignore me.

[edit] It really would be better to break it up 11 & 11...instead of 11, 5/6 & 5/6.

 

[startrekwatcher]

Those shows you mention were the cream of the crop, the ones that rose to become the "classics" of their day. For each one of them, there were another ten shows that were utter dross and were canceled; the lucky ones became Trivial Pursuit questions. Every generation thinks that the current entertainment of their day is mostly crap, and the previous generation's was the greatest thing since canned beer, whereas if you take a step back, you'll find that they're all pretty much the same as to the proportion of shows that made a lasting impact and shows that were crap or filler or both.

Of course there were crappy shows in the 80s/90s I'm arguing the ratio of good shows produced in the 80s/90s to bad shows was higher than good shows produced in the 00s to bad shows in 00s. Even the sillier shows like A-Team, Charlie's Angels, Knight Rider, Dukes of Hazzard had a charm and entertained much more than any 00 counterpart in my opinion.

Even the studios realize this as evidenced by them resurrecting all those great shows--just look at the list of reboots or revisits in the 00 in both tv and film--Charlie's Angels, Dallas, Knight Rider, Hawaii 5-0, Melrose Place, 90210, Bionic Woman, Karate Kid, Elm Street, Friday the 13th. Halloween, V etc. And they don't work. Fringe or Haven wants to be the next X-Files but fail. They even just copy and paste i.e. CSI spawns CSI Miami and NY, Criminal Minds and Suspect Behavior, NCIS and NCIS LA. At least when shows in the 80s/90s spun off they were unique--All in the Family leading to The Jeffersons, Happy Days to Mork & Mindy, Laverne Shirley, Golden Girls to Empty Nest and Nurses, TNG to DS9.

Shows these days are stale with weak actors and uninteresting characters. The plots are recycled. The writers aren't as talented--to compensate for this shortcoming they rely heavily on VFX, ADHD pacing and tons of action. Sitcoms rely on lowbrow humor. Shows these days can't sustain 20+ episodes seasons of consistently enjoyable episodes week in and week out. Even the better shows from this last decade aren't as good as overall as their predecessors.

Lost for instance was mostly consistent in S3-5 but relied heavily on twists and cliffhangers, which were very effective, but in the end as a whole it falls apart--mishandling its mythology--the X-Files had the luxury of not making it a central focus choosing instead to rely on standalone mysteries so it gets a pass from me. BSG started out strong but lost focus after S2 and botched its mythology, became too full of itself and tried too hard to be anti-Trek. S1 of Heroes was brilliant but fell apart after that. Who wants to invest in a show that can't be good for a few seasons at least.

There just aren't shows that can be consistently entertaining with fresh stories.

 

[Roger Wilco]

I couldn't disagree more, imo the tv today (unless you're talking about strictly network tv, but maybe even then) is the best tv has ever been.

Sopranos, Mad Men, West Wing, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, Buffy, Galactica, Shield, Oz, Arrested Developmen, Daily Show, Survivor, Lost, South Park, Friday Night Lights, House, Office - how many of these shows can you imagine in the 70s/80s (and that's just what I thought of spontaneously)? Some may be, most certainly aren't.

I think you watch too much bad tv, and not enough good tv, or you just subconsciously enjoy torturing yourself with crappy entertainment.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

There's more bad TV on broadcast, but that's because cable has sucked all the good TV away. And because there's more time to fill on cable, it's just playing the odds that there's more good TV overall.

Proportionately, there may be a greater percentage of bad TV overall but it's humanly impossible to watch more than a small percentage of all TV, so the percentage doesn't actually matter.

I am still trying to grasp what a "good" show is you and Temis keep bringing up..

Lost. I enjoyed the so-called "filler" episodes before they cut the seasons down. Maybe not as much as I enjoyed the episodes that were more to the point, but definitely more than I would have enjoyed whatever ABC put in their place, because I don't like anything else on ABC. Well, except V, but that shows how desperate I am for anything to watch.

If there were a show on TV right now that was only as good as the "filler" episodes of Lost - and never as good as the best episodes - I would be happily watching it. Because what else is there? V is horrible (and thankfully over). I checked out Breakout Kings, but it's too formulaic for my tastes.

The problem with this discussion is that we're talking about different business models. Cable can do more specifically targeted, niche shows because they get subscription revenue. And that revenue also gives them the luxury of 13-episode seasons. Broadcast does not have that luxury; they need to do longer seasons to amortize their costs and they need to appeal to a broader audience because they can't survive on cable-sized audiences.

So does the difference in quality anything to do with the length of the season? Or is it due to being able to target a niche audience vs having to appeal to a broad audience? All the shows I like are niche audience shows, one way or the other, and I suspect that's because a niche show is more likely to be targetted to me. So of course I'm going to like the niche shows targetted to my niche taste (while ignoring the larger number of niche shows not targetted to me), and other people with other niche tastes are doing the same, which creates the illusion that 13-episode seasons are better. It's correlation, not causation.

But it's not the number of episodes that creates quality; it's the targetting. If CBS did a 13 episode season of one of their CSI shows, I wouldn't watch it anymore than I'd watch the usual length season. CSI simply doesn't interest me, and it's never going to, because it's not targetted to my niche tastes.

 

[Jax]

On a personal level the future of broadcast TV in america is starting to look sucky and with have several ageing shows thast I watch...there is nothing coming up to replace them and this season + next fall pilots sound MEH.

FOX is giving so much of its time away to reality with X Factor, Idol and the two kitchen reality shows, theres not enough scripted drama and Glee is fucking horrible.

CBS outside of TBBT has literally NOTHING on its network that interests me because it seems every show is a fucking clone of another one. CBS is turning into the franchise network with 3 CSI's, 2 NCIS and 2 CM shows.

NBC is so low rated its not worth watching their shows because they will probably be cancelled. ABC is going the way of NBC and that situation is only going to get worse.

CW - Give me a break there best show is a fucking WB show that ends this season.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

It's correlation, not causation.

These 4 words sum up the whole thing, IMO.

Just because many good (cable) shows are 13 episodes does not mean that many 13 episode shows will be good.

 

[Jetfire]

Either way network TV is highly inconsistent and this is part of the problem...along with how people view TV shows...I mean I watch more TV shows online than I do through the set. Much like what Jax is saying networks are most like going to anchor their programming with reality based shows...see American Idol, The Biggest Loser, Survivor and fill in the blanks with scripted shows with shorter seasons. And networks are going to have to pick their battles with what niche to target...lets face it...Reality TV is better aimed at a wider audience than a one hour drama or a 30 minute one camera comedy. The only network that seems bullet proof is CBS...but ABC, FOX, NBC & The CW will need to change things up and be more consistent with their schedules to keep an audience. This is all my opinion so I am not even trying to argue with you...I understand what you are saying PKTrekGirl & Temis...but it doesn't change that TV isn't what it was 30 years ago or even 10 or 15 years ago.

Anyway I think my biggest beef is with how the shows I watch are chopped up with 2 huge breaks in between the season. I might just abandon watching TV all together and just wait for the DVDs.

[edit] I loved LOST and it really didn't have "filler" eps...it did have mediocre eps but feel they added to the story each season.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

Oh, I completely agree with you that TV is not what it used to be. I just don't think that going to 13 episode seasons of what few shows still are good is the solution to making TV as a whole better - mostly because it will increase per episode costs, which in turn will lead to fewer of those kinds of shows and more of the less expensive shows.

I suspect that TV, like everything else in this country, will end up being class-based. Good TV for those who can afford to pay for it...and crap for those who cannot.

But don't get me started on the eventual decimation and extinction of the middle class.

 

[mswood]

On a personal level the future of broadcast TV in america is starting to look sucky and with have several ageing shows thast I watch...there is nothing coming up to replace them and this season + next fall pilots sound MEH.

FOX is giving so much of its time away to reality with X Factor, Idol and the two kitchen reality shows, theres not enough scripted drama and Glee is fucking horrible.

CBS outside of TBBT has literally NOTHING on its network that interests me because it seems every show is a fucking clone of another one. CBS is turning into the franchise network with 3 CSI's, 2 NCIS and 2 CM shows.

NBC is so low rated its not worth watching their shows because they will probably be cancelled. ABC is going the way of NBC and that situation is only going to get worse.

CW - Give me a break there best show is a fucking WB show that ends this season.

You seriously believe Smallville is the best show on the CW? Lord, that really doesn't speak well for you.

I do agree with a lot of your other points.

 

[Jetfire]

^
Yeah...we all know the best show on The CW is Vampire Diaries.