Quote:
Originally Posted by Relentless
Mash, Frasier, All In The Family and dozens of other shows put together seasons twice as long without any filler. The money was there to support it. AMC stretched the final season of BB into two mini seasons at the last minute as a cash grab. Writers and actors can churn out many more quality episodes in the same amount of time... But it's more profitable not to do so these days. If you think ten or twelve episodes a year is the most a show can produce, you think less of the writers and crew than I do. There is no financial incentive unfortunately.
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I think they can do it, but I think it is harder to do. I agree fully that ad revenue is down. Add in piracy and those who DVR and don't even see the commercials and revenue across the board is down the TV industry. However, I think if a lot of the shows that people think are great suddenly doubled the amount of episodes they put out every year the quality on some of them would drop.
I just think many shows these days would rather know for certain that they can make something good and keep the seasons shorter than hope they can do it and make the seasons longer. Not to mention when those 10-12 episodes seasons end up places like Netflix and the shows start getting good word of mouth or winning awards it makes it easy for people to go back and catch up. They can continue go grow their audience easier.
If you look back over the last 15 years only 3 network TV shows have won the Golden Globe for best dramatic series. The other 12 were all cable shows. I think a lot of executives see the trend and decide if it isn't broken don't fix it.