They've completely messed with the entire concept of a "season."
Now, all the shows are doing this thing called a "winter finale," which means that they create a cliff-hanger episode before Thanksgiving, and then go to repeats until January, and sometimes not until March.
The "season" used to be 33 episodes in the 1950s and 1960s. Then the season fell to 22-23 episodes, with repeats to fill the September-May window, and now they have 12-episode shows, with these shows slipping into the "winter" gap between the "winter finale" and when the show returns in March.
Who can keep up the on-again-off-again shows? Who can follow a storyline when one show runs in its time slot from September to November, a new show starts in November through March, and then the original show comes back to finish its seasonal run?
Do we even still have the concept of a February sweeps and May sweeps week?
-PJ
I’m glad for the reduced number of episodes, even if it means a long break. That would just be ten filler episodes that would weaken the narrative. Shows like Fargo and Better Call Saul that are 10-13 episodes are tight and streamlined.
Sweeps only apply to broadcast network shows.
Decades ago I saw an article on why disappearing/reappearing shows were a bad idea. Show has to rebuild it’s audience every season. But high ratings haven’t been the goal for years. Now it just get adequate ratings for at least 5 seasons then turn it into a DVD box set and/or a big syndication package.