^ Hmm. I don't really see any similarities at all between what you described and what Saban is currently doing...
Umm... the fact that a given series/incarnation was split into two distinct segments with a long gap between them, and that those two segments belonged to different seasons?
The main difference being, of course, that on FOX we got two half-series in each broadcast year, so that each distinct series still fell within a single 12-month (or actually 9-month) span; whereas in this case, the first season of
Samurai was February to December 2011 and the second begins this February, so the episodes are more widely distributed.
but that might be because we've never ever had a season of PR - or any Saban show, for that matter - that only consisted of 20 episodes, the final two of which were clip shows (as was the case with Samurai).
The season lengths these days are shorter than they were back then. The thing to remember is that PR used to be aired five days a week on FOX. Now it's a once-a-week show, and it's long been typical for weekly television series to have seasons of 22-24 episodes, if not fewer. Plenty of cable series these days air only 13 episodes per year. Having 24 episodes in the first season and 20 in the second may be an unusual approach for
Power Rangers, but it's well within the norm for weekly TV series in general.
As an aside, my distaste/dissatisfaction with the stance Saban has taken means that, for me, PRS and PRSS will be counted as a single season (Season 18). This is the same stance I take with regards to MMAR, which I count as part of MMPR S3.
I've never seen it counted any other way. Every episode guide I know of lists MMAR as the last 10 episodes of season 3. A legitimate case can be made for treating it as a distinct phase of the series, but that doesn't translate to being a distinct season in any technically valid sense.
In this case, though, we have one set of episodes aired in 2011 and another set starting one year later in 2012. Regardless of when and how they were produced, blocks of episodes that are aired a year or more apart are, by definition, broadcast in two different seasons.