In linear or cable television, networks had to fitpisodes into a 30 or 60-minute time slot with commercials due to scheduled programming. The rise of streaming services has eliminated that need, leading to television episodes getting longer.
One reason for this is the advertising industry is shrinking. Agencies are not getting the necessary funding with risingproduction costs, leading to a decrease in the quality of their products. With the emergence of retail and social media advertising, companies have started to shift away from cable TV advertisements.
The cost of an advertisement is getting lower on streaming sites because there are no “prime time” spots with these streaming services. Viewers can now watch TV whenever they want.
Advertisements are also more directed on streaming services because each one is shown to the target demographics. Companies can take this notion and use it to defend their smaller production budgets.
Newer TV shows are now longer than in previous years and vary in length. The Netflix drama “Inventing Anna” has episode lengths ranging from 60 to 82 minutes. The Disney+ series “The Book of Boba Fett” has episodes ranging from 39 to 61 minutes. Every episode in the fourth season of “Stranger Things” was over an hour long, with the finale clocking in at 2 hours and 22 minutes.
“Hacks” storyteller and co-executive producer Paul W. Downs said there is a benefit to the length.
He told Varietyhat the length “allows us to have room for stories that might have otherwise been really short.”
Episodes longer than the classic 30-minute length struggle to holdviewers’ attention, so TV creators have started to find ways around it. The most basic way is by adaptingstorylines to retain viewer attention using methods like cliffhangers.
Holding episodes for release at various times is another method. It allows streaming services to replicate the linear TV method of releasing one episode weekly, keeping people interested in the next episode.
Long episodes are becoming the norm for television and streaming services have brought television more flexibility in creation. However, some people do not believe it is for the better.
Gareth Neame, the showrunner for “The Gilded Age,” spoke to Varietyabout the rhythm of making a TV show.
“There’s one part of me that quite likes the discipline,” Neame said. “You know that every scene that stayed in the cut is something that really earns its place. Even if you’re bingeing something all the way through, we have a sense of how long an episode should last. If you start to go half an hour over, that feels a bit confusing. There’s a natural length to an episode that we’ve all been trained to watch.”
While episode lengths getting longer, TV seasons are shrinking. Production costs for making TV shows are growing, causing networks to cut the amount of episodes released per season. If the episodes are longer, production companies can still tell the same length of a story for less cost.
The 2023 Hollywood writers’ strike was caused by and resulted in the cheaper making of television. Before the strike, writers were being forced to “break stories,” or break seasons down and structure them.
Due to this definition of the work, the writers were only allowed to be paid the union minimum and were not kept for very long. Some writers felt that they were doing the same amount of work for less pay and at a quicker rate.
During and after the strike, networks were no longer choosing to find cheaper ways to produce television. Instead, the companies were forced to create these products, resulting in longer episodes and shorter, cheaperseasons.
While longer episodes and shorter seasons for television may not be exciting for everyone, it is the future of TV. Networks and production companies are trying to figure out the best way to keep audiences interested while compensating workers well. However, nobody knows what the television industry will look like in the future.
