Episodic tv takes skills to do properly, in this day and age. People now expect even side-characters to be fully fleshed out, and that’s difficult to do in a short amount of time. It’s also clear that a lot of “hot” showrunners, while great at building suspense and devising cliffhangers, are actually pretty bad at ending stories, so a more serialised approach allows them to kick the can down the road (e.g. Lost). After all, you become famous by generating interest and expectations, not by actually fulfilling them.