The frustrating thing is there are already shows with very small budgets that still don’t get a lot of episodes.
It all comes down to the end of syndication and how shows just don’t have same residual income stream as they used to, so there isn’t a reason to make a bunch of episodes to run as re-runs on various other TV networks to make extra money after the initial run of the show.
Well, maybe not just syndication. It’s also about the storage costs of high quality video and part of why some shows disappear forever: because they have such low viewing numbers that it makes more sense to free up the space for some other show with more views and more ability to retain subscribers/get new subscribers. Which in itself is an indictment of the inefficient ways the industry shares this media instead of using some sort of decentralized network protocol like bittorrent to seed the files out without necessarily needing them always centrally stored. Hell, even if it was just corporations sharing the data amongst themselves, it would still be more efficient than completely recreating the data anew in every corporate internal network.
It’s more efficient to film 20+ episodes of one show than 10+ episodes each of two shows, and a single series is more likely to retain viewers over time, both of which make the longer form more appealing to broadcasters. Every time you swap out one show for another on your schedule, you have to win over the audience again.
Streaming doesn’t have to fill a schedule, they just need to have something that will bring in new subscribers and retain existing ones. A new 10 episode series is about as much of a draw as a new 20 episode series. More new shows is more novelty and more chances to peak someone’s interest. If something’s a big hit they can give it another season. If not, it can just fill out the catalog and give the appearance of value.
The frustrating thing is there are already shows with very small budgets that still don’t get a lot of episodes.
It all comes down to the end of syndication and how shows just don’t have same residual income stream as they used to, so there isn’t a reason to make a bunch of episodes to run as re-runs on various other TV networks to make extra money after the initial run of the show.
Well, maybe not just syndication. It’s also about the storage costs of high quality video and part of why some shows disappear forever: because they have such low viewing numbers that it makes more sense to free up the space for some other show with more views and more ability to retain subscribers/get new subscribers. Which in itself is an indictment of the inefficient ways the industry shares this media instead of using some sort of decentralized network protocol like bittorrent to seed the files out without necessarily needing them always centrally stored. Hell, even if it was just corporations sharing the data amongst themselves, it would still be more efficient than completely recreating the data anew in every corporate internal network.
The incentives driving them are different.
It’s more efficient to film 20+ episodes of one show than 10+ episodes each of two shows, and a single series is more likely to retain viewers over time, both of which make the longer form more appealing to broadcasters. Every time you swap out one show for another on your schedule, you have to win over the audience again.
Streaming doesn’t have to fill a schedule, they just need to have something that will bring in new subscribers and retain existing ones. A new 10 episode series is about as much of a draw as a new 20 episode series. More new shows is more novelty and more chances to peak someone’s interest. If something’s a big hit they can give it another season. If not, it can just fill out the catalog and give the appearance of value.