COMMENTARY

Three Seasons of Any TV Show Is Enough - Just Ask Streaming Users

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, March 17, 2023

Three years and an average of eight episodes per season, and it's over? Is that the new normal for today’s modern TV series? Yes, those are the dynamics for what could be described as a successful TV series. Make that a streaming TV series.

Susan Rovner, chairman/entertainment content, NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, said recently at SXSW: "When you look at a lot of the streamers and how they program now, it’s 'three seasons, eight episodes each season and we’re done.' So they’re not building those libraries, and I think that’s a mistake. I think that’s going to catch up."

Maybe. Have you seen the average duration or a show on Netflix over the last decade? Three seasons and eight episodes per season would be a good deal. If Netflix has figured out how to make money, maybe you can too -- or maybe just in your dreams.

I wonder how this will work in the future for all premium content streamers -- Peacock, HBO Max, Disney+, Paramount+, AMC+ -- when it comes to building more long-lasting libraries? When you are looking to grow quickly -- and be profitable -- that will be a tough task in any event.

Lifetime TV series’ seasons and episodes are getting smaller. In the future, forget about your "NCIS" with its 20-year run -- now totaling 450 episodes -- or "Grey’s Anatomy," now at 19 seasons and 400 episodes.

Shorter, quicker TV series seem to be what most consumers want -- to move on to the next must-see thing. Blame the lure of so-called "peak TV" if you must.

John Landgraf, chairman of FX Networks, used to complain regularly that a growing number of premium TV series on broadcast, cable, streaming and other channels would create a massive problem due to the time that would be needed for viewers to consume all these "peak TV" shows .. and then, adding in the costs of marketing those shows.

As it turns out, for peak TV, the “peaks” may be just short climbs up a big TV hill. And bingeing plays a major role in this.

Viewers are now conditioned to move on to other shows -- believing they are already missing a lot of programming on other new streamers and platforms.

Apple TV+'s "Ted Lasso" has read the tea leaves. At the beginning, it was always planned to be a three-season show. It recently started up its final season.

Netflix’s "Grace and Frankie" lasted seven seasons with a total of 78 episodes --- which means a little more than 10 episodes a season. Still, it remain's Netflix’s longest-running original show to date.

And perhaps, looking back some years from now, just a streaming outlier.