You're skipping over something really important about these shows.
Build up and word of mouth. If either of these series' seasons dropped all at once, I'm 100% certain they wouldn't have been nearly as big.
BB Season 4 was the absolute peak of "what's going to happen next???" for the internet communities I was involved in, my family members who were watching, my friends who were watching, casual chats at work. There was suspense in waiting week to week and discussions carried on while we waited.
Netflix releasing episodes all at once has completely destroyed momentum and build up. With everyone watching at their own pace, there's no collective presence. The episodes might have your mental space for a couple days/weeks while you binge, and then it's gone, and people who are also interested are going to be on different timelines.
You're less likely to recommend the show to others 6 months later, because you literally haven't watched or thought about it for 6 months.
I like AppleTV+'s move of doing weekly episodes. Everyone is on the same page again, and you get to share something together.
This is the case in online serials, and books, as well.
There is also an emotional investment factor that comes with long serials, as opposed to single seasons. The more time you put into something--even just in terms of watching it, or reading it--the more emotionally invested you become.
In other words, there is an addiction factor. The addiction factor does not kick in until at least a season 2 or 3.
Actually, both Netflix and Amazon now release one episode a week for some shows.
Lost was a watershed moment in many ways, even though JJ Abrams couldn’t stick the landing. They rushed out the DVDs of season 1 about a month before the season 2 premiere, giving people time to binge the whole show (even the pirates). As long as the streaming services keep the back catalog around, you can always catch up. I have forgotten which show, but there was a network show I stopped watching because they only had the last six episodes on their app. Once I fell seven episodes behind, I didn’t want to keep going, having missed a chunk of the story arc.
There’s a certain level of curiosity for a show that has survived, say, six seasons. They must have something there if they keep going. Maybe I should check it out? Especially if I’m out of other stuff. But is it going to have a satisfying final episode, peter out, or end ina cliff hanger? The more seasons, the higher the likelihood for a wrap up. Two season shows almost always end abruptly.
Season 4 is where it started to fall apart. Season 6 through 8 suffered terribly with the shift in writing and structure, and I'd be happy to never watch any of those episodes again.
But I agree with Lost. "Really original show but it pretty much goes off the rails."
To everyone's surprise, there isn't any payoff, and there aren't any consequences.
It was not really a surprise. As you said things went off the rails for a while already, that was a sign of a bad ending early on. When I saw how quickly they wrapped the Night King in Season 8 I knew all hopes were lost for a good ending.
That's a pretty lame sales pitch. I think you meant you wouldn't mind recommending them, but then you wrote out a quote as if it were actually a pitch
The "pitch" for catching up on GOT now is much weaker now than it was midway through the series.
An awesome show becoming an ok show and then ending as a terrible show is not worth recommending for anyone.
For me Lost, was a great show, with highs and lows, with fairly good last season, with a very disappointing and confusing last episode. Still worth the ride in my opinion.
If you feel characterization is the most important thing, and the emotional connection to characters or having highly evocative emotional moments in the narrative is what makes it worthwhile then you will probably like Lost quite a bit, but you might hate GoT (given my understanding that the last season fucked up major characters for shock value - I can't speak directly to it as I haven't watched it)
So based on that my wife still talks about how great Lost was, and if it gets brought up the first words out of my mouth will not be complimentary.
I'm not sure I would recommend your examples to a friend though. GOT started going downhill around season 5; it wasn't just the ending that was bad. I'm sure people would disagree with me here, but I think lost hasn't aged very well. it was a good show only by the mediocre standards of '00s TV.
Now the show is under a lot of pressure to maintain a level of buzz around it. But I also might not watch it if it seems like an okay show but the moment has passed.
I low-key wanted to watch GoT when it was on. Now I wouldn't bother, because all the people I could talk to about it have already watched it and are sick of it.
Procrastination is surely in the top five.
Not really. Some shows just get milked dry and pass their expiration dates. For example Walking Dead or even The Simpsons. There’s value to an artist who can tell a story in 1-2 seasons.
A challenge here for a long series though is that it's a pretty high bar to get people to retrospectively binge watch many hours of episodes. But streaming does help. (As time shifting did to some degree before.) The serial model has probably become so popular in part because it's a much better match with streaming (even if everything doesn't drop at once) than with traditional broadcast.
This is only true for modern TV formats that favor season+ long story arcs so much that any individual episode often contains neither the start nor end of any particular plot and is entirely meaningless outside of its larger contextual role in the series.
In old-fashioned TV, each episode pretty much had to stand on its own as a story and stood a much better chance of hooking new viewers. The downside of that approach of course is that status-quo is God and almost nothing truly interesting ever happens because of it.
The best shows, in my opinion, manage to mix these in a way such that any individual episode can be interesting even to someone who has never seen the show before, while still creating a larger more interesting narrative over time. My personal gold standard for this is Stargate SG-1, which lasted 10 seasons and started with human beings walking through a wormhole to encounter the monster-of-the-week and ended with them zooming across the galaxy in starships and fighting ascended would-be-deities.
However, shows like ST:NG or Stargate SG-1 I enjoyed completely. I'd watch one or two episodes at a time and leave feeling good.
Watching shows like ST:TOS are painful for me now. That there is absolutely no connection from one episode to the next means that I have pretty much no investment in what happens. I only watched TOS just to complete the Star Trek lore, but in general I avoid such stories.
To be honest, even if the show stays strong, you start to hit the 6th and 7th season of 20x1hr seasons and I've probably lost interest. I know there are people who would be happy for their favorite shows to just keep going year after year because they're old friends but I'm not one of them.
I think it's significant that two much loved, much mourned shows with huge fandoms, Gilmore Girls and Arrested Development were revived on Netflix and neither really came up with any fresh ideas.
Otherwise I just don't get excited about "revivals" anymore.
So at the time, the first season didn't seem so bad. It was probably on par with what most people of the time expected. In hindsight ST:TNG may seem like "a decent show with a bad start", but at the time it seemed like "a pretty decent show that just kept getting better". ST:TNG is part of what set the modern bar, and it's a lot of what set the modern bar if you kind of lump it in with Deep Space Nine.
By modern standards it is weak because the tech of the time didn't support season-long arcs because there was very little rewatchability, but if you try to delve into science fiction prior to ST:TNG, be prepared to... make concessions.
Many shows are like movies, where stopping between two episodes feels like you're stopping a movie right at the most intense spot.
You either binge watch the whole show, or rage-quite at 3am never to watch another episode.
DS9 is my favorite though, partially because of the story arc. It was also done quite brilliantly, with the story arc always being present, but not really solidifying into something substantial right away. This along with Babylon 5 were amazing. Prior to these shows, the only television sci-fi I had ever seen with a story arc was Robotech. Battlestar Galatica (original) had something of an arc, but was more like TNG.
- ones with a season-long arc. This gives the authors time and space to develop the characters, and reach a satisfying conclusion. But these often suffer from pacing issues, because mid-season episodes become filler.
- ones with episodic stories and with a season-long arc (a problem or a villain that keeps popping up). This helps with pacing, but still lets authors build up momentum and develop characters and stories. These often suffer from underdeveloped arcs though and unresolved season cliffhangers hinting at "that arc we developed, it's so much bigger than you thought".
I assume that's been less the case for the newer Star Trek universe series. I don't actually know the numbers but the TV landscape is too different to really compare anyway.
Added: As someone who remembers watching TNG when it first came out, my recollection is that the reaction to "Encounter at Farpoint" (S1E1) was along the lines of a bit disappointing but certainly has promise. And it's new Star Trek on TV!
When all TV was by appointment (no easy way to rewatch), series emphasized self-contained episodes. You could watch half of the episodes of any season of Star Trek or TNG and still enjoy it. Same with other popular shows like Magnum PI, Law and Order, etc. There was some ongoing charater development, but it was pretty slow and minimal.
As rewatching got easier (essentially once market penetration of VCRs got high enough), popular series started introducing more serial story lines. X Files is a great example; it started off with mostly "monster of the week" self-contained stories, and then over time added "lore"--ongoing serial storylines.
On digital platforms, watching and rewatching are basically the same thing, so a series can be 100% serial storyline. Essentially, they are very long movies that are released one chapter at a time.
This has affected movies too. There's no way something like the MCU would have worked as a concept without very easy ways for viewers coming into the middle to go back and watch or re-watch earlier movies.
I think for prime time viewing, Hill Street Blues was the first semi-serialized drama intended for viewers outside of the soap market. It had an interesting structure with A, B, and C plots. A plot gets resolved in a single episode. B plot is a 3-4 episode arc. And C plot lasts for the season. And then there was continuity from season to season. The show was decently successful, and paved the way for what we have now. One thing I find interesting is how many older viewers at the time thought it was too fast paced, too complex, and didn't enjoy it. They were too conditioned to the episodic norms. I'm sure the show would seem slow now to modern binge watchers.
(This is one of those pop culture facts I didn't realize until recently, as I never liked the original series, but adore Next Generation. All of its cultural impact was from just three seasons, and possibly most of its immediate impact from the first.)
This comment strikes me as very strange. I guess you're talking about TNG? But the Original Series was canceled after the third season. Nonetheless, Star Trek reached the masses. The reruns in syndication became more popular than the original airings, and countless films and spinoffs resulted.
It also lacked the standard # of episodes required for syndication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_episodes
I'm confused, what are you referring to here?
The Original Series ended in 1969. It was truly dead. But the fans kept it "alive" for a decade. Its popularity rose through reruns, conventions, etc. The Motion Picture was released in 1979, followed by The Wrath of Khan in 1982. The Next Generation started in 1987. These weren't pauses in production. The films never would have gotten made if not for the rabid fan base, and TNG would never have gotten made if not for the popularity of the films.
First, in the age of binge watching, people might be specifically looking for shows with tons of episodes/seasons out to sink their teeth in.
Second, some shows take a while to "warm up" and get the word of mouth out before they catch on. Some shows might be dozens of episodes in before they become wildly popular. You say that Breaking Bad and GOT break the dynamic, but I think it's far more common that very popular shows do so after they've been out for a while.
Third, with episodic formats it doesn't matter if a show is long running, people can jump in or out at any given time.
Fourth, people might enter your target demographic over time. You say that the potential viewers of season 3 are the viewers of season 2, but what about a new batch of viewers of season 1? Let's say your demographic is young adults. Every year you have teens entering your target demographic, and you could count those as potential viewers of your show. And again, on the age of the internet, is dead easy to start viewing a show from the beginning at any time.
The stuff that's relying on being dense and literary, with an overall point being made, tends to need to get the job done within a few hours of runtime. 6-12 hours, like you say.
IIRC American Horror Story had increased viewership in the 2nd and then again in the 3rd season, but it did eventually go downhill. Ryan Murphy shows are also pretty weird though, it would be nice to see the seasonal anthology format in broader contexts. I'm optimistic about the Haunting of Hill House series but that's again horror.
Whether or not you need to see season 1 to get season 4, do people who haven't watched earlier seasons generally watch a season 4?
This actually would be a perfect fit for me - I noticed that it became off-putting for me when I see that show has more than two-three seasons. I'm not sure what changed because it wasn't like this before - probably it's just my increasing age and number of accumulated experiences from books etc.
I'm probably one of the guilty people who are generally happier with bite, or at least light meal, sized content.
Maybe the statistics bear out that season n + 1 has audience <= season n, but I don’t really think that way at all
- Viewers watching shows costs money to pay for networking.
- Producings shows cost money.
- Consumers pay the same amount regardless of how much they watch.
Sort of like a gym membership, the ideal Netflix customer never actually uses Netflix. But, of course, if Netflix had no shows and someone didn't use it at all, they'll eventually cancel the subscription. If Netflix were the only game in town, then its incentive would be to produce the fewest, shittiest (i.e. cheapest) shows they can and have its customers watch just enough to not bother canceling.
But now that there are other subscription services, they have to compete against them. Customers can and do pay for multiple subscription services, but there is an innate limit to how many it makes sense to have in parallel: your watch time is finite.
I witnessed this in game dev when MMOs first got big. There was a big rush where every game company thought MMOs would be the next big thing. But almost all of them died, because it turns out even gamers who love MMOs can really only afford the time to keep up with one or two. The market was a lot more competitive and limited than they realized.
This is less true for TV shows since there is less social interaction and need to "commit" to a show than to a game. You don't have to worry about leaving your guild behind, etc. But there is still a limit to how many shows a person can watch, which means the marginal value of adding another subscription goes down very quickly.
I think that's the main thing driving Netflix's strategy. They aren't trying to earn customers so much as they are trying to starve competitors and claim territory.
To claim territory, what they want to do is soak up as much watch time as possible. If people are constantly watching Netflix shows—even if they barely enjoy doing so!—it makes their other subscriptions less utilized and thus less valuable.
Given that, I think it makes some sense for them to just throw a ton of shit at the wall and see what sticks. Their main goal is that is to have something just good enough to watch show up in a search result when a viewer is trying to decide what to spend their evening on.
Of course, none of this incentivizes telling meaningful, important, gratifying stories about the human condition. But Netflix, like every large corporation, doesn't care on whit about that. They turn human attention into shareholder value. The fact that they happen to create films ("content" as they say) to do so is mostly incidental, in the same way that cattle ranchers happen to buy a lot of corn.
There weren't that many multi-season shows that I loved and had a decent ending - usually it gets milked to death that main actors quit and then either show cancelled (Castle) or get a new actor and suck (x-files).
Some shows have awful resurrection - 24, I loved the entire thing except for "reboot" and last season.
Some shows have honest writers, BSG reboot was clearly getting too convoluted and had to be ended before it cancelled.
Some shows try to pivot to tumbler fanfics for content - Supernatural. Which was dumb because people were interested in such stories were already watching it.
> If you have a new series, all potential viewers are potential viewers. If you have a season 3, the only potential viewers are season 2 watchers.
That doesn't always top factor. Some shows can generate money outside of screen - merch. That's how supernatural stayed so long.
If you have a new series, all potential viewers are potential viewers. If you have a season 3, the only potential viewers are season 2 watchers. A genuinely huge show like breaking bad or GOT might break this dynamic, as people eventually catch up on old seasons and make the pool bigger. In normal circumstances though, new seasons have limited potential. They also have no upside. Season 4 is not going to be a blockbuster if 1-3 were average.
Maybe it makes sense to shoot single seasons, with multiple seasons being a rare circumstance thing. Just tell a story that fits in 6-12 hours.
Seems like it would be good for creativity, the opposite of cinema's recycling problem. Who says new shows are worse than new seasons. It even seems like a bolder choice to me. No guaranteed audience, but unlimited audience.