Since COVID-19, the rise in popularity and use rate of streaming services has skyrocketed tremendously. These streaming services have completely rewritten the rules of television, moving TV from a weekly consumed medium into a highly expensive, program-based television sold in overpriced packages. These changes have led to mass changes in the production of TV shows and have completely changed the experience viewers have.
Traditionally, annual television seasons and productions have completely changed in style. Streaming shows now, in modern TV shows, require 15 to 30 plus months of waiting between seasons. These overly extended waits between seasons make series feel more like infrequently timed movie sequels than ongoing TV series.
Another big decline and change that has come from the TV series through streaming services comes with the number of episodes and episode length per season. Before, the standard length of a series season would be around 22 episodes per season. But now the length of a season is around 6 to 8 episodes per season. This is a major decrease in the number of episodes that streaming services try to make up for with episode length by making these episodes 48 minutes to an hour long.
These bloated runtimes make it hard for many people to find the time to sit and watch a series without finding distractions or interruptions, as well as doesn’t serve as a proper substitute for the decreased episode count since they come with a great change in pacing.
As well as the culture change that happens, the idea of binge-watching removes a major aspect of the culture that came from the weekly produced episodes that would release that would engage audiences in conversations and mystery, etc. These fan discussions were a big part of the cultural impact for many shows and their rise to stardom and building fan bases that care.
Streaming services have made major changes to the TV production system that now, at this point, will never go away any time soon. These constantly increase in price, punishing subscribers for not buying premium packages without commercials, shortening season length, and overly long wait times for seasons are changes that have been made and set the standard for years to come, and have completely killed and replaced the classical style of TV series and production.
