Poll: Would American T.V be better off with shorter runs?

Cafe Society
1

After reading this thread, I got thinking ‘does the quality in American T.V suffer from having 20+ episodes in a season?’ IMHO most of the best shows of British T.V have short seasons in comparisons to American, but then again most British shows have short seasons. We’re talking about story based shows like Heroes not game shows or soaps (even if they are ‘story-based’)

Mind you, I’m neither British nor American. Some of my favourites:
Extras: 2 seasons (13 episodes)
The Office: 2 seasons (14 episodes)
Fawlty Towers: 2 seasons (12 episodes)
Not the nine o’clock news: 4 seasons (27 episodes)
Blackadder: 4 seasons (24 episodes + a hell of a lot of specials)
Red Dwarf: 8 seasons (55 episodes, went downhill after they started doing 8 episodes per season)
Father Ted: 3 seasons (25 episodes)
Hustle: 6 seasons (36 episodes 7th season in production)

Okay, so you can probably tell I prefer comedies. But one other thing you can see is that for each season there is only around 6-8 episodes. How would that effect a show like Heroes, for example? Would it be better? Not as many episodes so we can do away with all the fluff?

What do you think?

2

You know what they show in the UK around all of those other perfectly-crafted, short-run shows? American shows. Gotta fill time somehow!

Short runs might make the quality better (on some shows, not all) but it would sure leave us with either a hell of a lot of reruns or a lot of crappy filler shows.

3

Zipper, I’m not saying that American shows suck, the first season of Heroes was fantastic, I thoroughly enjoy Boston Legal, South Park, Scrubs (well the first 4 seasons) and many, many other American shows. I just think that sometimes with some networks pushing 20+ episodes a season sometimes quality takes a back seat.

Though what you said about time-filling is a valid point. At least with reruns of Friends you can last years without watching the same episode.

4

If it’s an episodic show, I don’t mind whether it’s short or long so long as they know when it’s time to close things up. If there’s an overall story, though, you’re better off to figure out how much room you need and make that many episodes, be it one season or ten, no more, no less.

A 2 season, 13 per for 26 total, methodology works well for Japan. Not so short that you can’t fully develop the characters, but not so long that you waste money if the show isn’t a major success. Having a fairly standard run length also lets people get the feel for pacing out a show to be fairly consistent and to end well. The problem with the American way of continuing to stretch things out is that it means that everyone that writes scripts professionally has no practice in ending a TV show. Their whole job centers around figuring out ways to stretch things out and add new obstacles, not to resolve everything in a way that makes sense – except on a per-episode basis. So when they’re finally tasked with working a show down to a close, it just lacks the climactic oomph and complete finality as you get from Japanese shows. And of course, there’s nothing to stop you from doing a new 2-season set with the same characters (or at least the same universe) if the first one did well, you just have to come up with a new story that fits up to 2 seasons.

5

I didn’t see my choice, which would be to have more flexibility. I don’t think there’s any magic number that’s perfect for every show. For a multi-camera sitcom with a staff of writers, 90+ percent of the action taking place on a standing set, and each episode being self-contained, I don’t see why there couldn’t be 30 episodes or more a year.

For a single-camera drama shooting on multiple locations, with one or two writers doing most of the heavy lifting managing season or series-long story arcs, a shorter season would be more advantageous.

I’d like to see the creators of a show determine the ideal number of episodes to tell the stories they want to tell with the resources they expect to have available.

But sometimes the fluff is the best part! If you told Chris Carter to cut all the fluff out of The X-Files, he might have made every episode relevant to the “mythology” of the show – but the mythology bored me nearly to tears. I only cared about “the monster of the week” episodes. (Of course it’s possible shorter seasons might have led to a tighter, less convoluted mythology; it’s a purely hypothetical example.)

6

(Bold part mine)
Totally agreed, however I’ve never seen any Japanese shows apart from Dragonball and Doraemon which is obviously not what you’re talking about Sage Rat, so recommend any good ones?

I was thinking that the poll should have more options but then I would’ve ended up making 54 options. :wink: Sorry.

Let’s just make the polling mostly yes/no.

7

I have a question about how the British seasons work. Say you have a 6 or 7 episode season. Is it just 1 season per year? If so, you’d have to wait over 10 months to get a new episode. If that’s the case, I will have to vote no.

However, if they just take a month or 2 break, then start the new season that would be OK. That would actually be a lot like American TV with the mid-season breaks & re-runs here and there.

8

Shorter might be good for some shows, but not all; what would be good is being like Dexter, where they plan how many episodes they’re going to have. It seems to help with setting out the story arc. This might be difficult to justify paying for, of course.

9

This seems to imply that they plan differently from other series. Do you have any evidence for that? After all, each series of Dexter has been 12 episodes. It could simply be that Showtime says to them, “you’ve got 12 episodes to tell your story.”

It’s worth noting, in response to the OP, that 20+ episodes in a season is really only standard fare on American free-to-air network TV. Cable TV series, which i generally prefer, are usually short, with 12-13 episodes being a fairly standard number.

Here are the numbers for some of my favorite cable series:

The Wire (5 seasons): 13, 12, 12, 13, 10.
Six Feet Under (5 seasons): 13, 13, 13, 12, 12.
Rescue Me (5 seasons): 13, 13, 13, 13, 22 (this long season was essentially two short seasons, due to the writers’ strike)
Dexter (4 seasons): 12, 12, 12, 12.
Mad Men (3 seasons): 13, 13, 13 (4th season upcoming, with 13 also).
Deadwood (3 seasons): 12, 12, 12.
The Closer (5 seasons): 13, 15, 15, 15, 15.
Nurse Jackie (2 seasons): 12, 12.
Breaking Bad (3 seasons): 7, 13, 13 (first season shortened due to writers’ strike).

10

Does it make any difference whether it’s the writers asking for 12 episodes or the station giving them 12 episodes? It doesn’t make any difference to me - the consistency is what makes the difference.

Course, I can’t prove that it changes the way they plan, but it’s logical to presume that it’s easier to plan a season’s arc if you know if you know how many episodes you’ve got right from the start than if you only find out how many more episodes you have left once the season’s already started broadcasting.

Chuck, for example, got an extra few episodes once several had already broadcast and most of the others had been filmed. They’ve coped with it very well, by having one long story arc and one short one (which we haven’t seen all of yet). That must have take a hell of a lot of hard work and inspiration on the writers’ part.

11

Sure, but how often does the latter happen?

You were implying that Dexter is somehow unusual in knowing how many episodes to plan for, but it could be that a show like Chuck is the exception rather than the rule, and that most producers know, going in, how many episodes they need to plan for.

Television shows generally work on contracts drawn up between the network and the producers, and those contracts are usually quite specific about how many episodes the network will pay for. Sometimes there are multiple levels to the contract, especially in the first season when the show is untested. For example, a contract might guarantee X episodes, with an option for Y more episodes if the first X get good ratings.

12

Cowboy Bebop
Key the Metal Idol was intended to be two seasons, but they cancelled the second season and did two movie-length episodes to finish off the second season.
Tenchi Muyo (Universe)
Escaflowne
Stand Alone Complex
Berserk

13

I’m not in the US, which probably makes a difference to what US shows I get to see. Maybe they’re mostly Network TV in origin?

I know that I’ve read similar stories for some of the other shows I watch, and some of the other shows have inconsistent numbers of episodes, while others are cancelled with so little notice that the writers have no chance of wrapping up the story. This isn’t a phenomenon that exists only in my mind.

I don’t really have any idea how the sitcoms proceed because the way they’re broadcast over here it’s like they’re always in production. It was years before I realised that the Simpsons even had seasons! :smiley:

14

Actually the answer is neither or both - or least it has been until recently. The UK doesn’t have the same idea of the TV year as the US does. Yes, we’ve always had a lot of new series start in the Autumn, (I’ve always heard that this was to coincide with the weather turning, and kids going back to school, so there was an audience bump in the evenings) but we have a bunch starting after the Christmas holidays usually too. After that, a new programme will start at pretty much any time of the year. Really popular programmes often have a series starting in January, say, and another in the Autumn, but many will have one new series a year only. The main thing, though, is that we don’t have the (fairly fixed) annual schedule that you seem to have in the US - and the idea of a mid-season break is a strange and unwelcome new discovery to us.

The idea that the same channel should show repeats of a programme whilst they’re also broadcasting the new series is also a bit strange, and historically hasn’t been something we’ve done in the UK. You might see a whole series repeated, but not whilst the new one is also on. I should add that this is all gradually changing very slightly as the time lag between broadcast in the US and UK shrinks, and with the rise of satellite tv which has always had a slightly more American feel to it. This year is the first, for example, that the mid-season break idea seems to have affected us - we caught up with some of the US programmes, and had to wait until they came back on air.

P.s. sorry, I did consider going back over this post and translating all the Autumns and series, but I thought I’d probably get some of them wrong :slight_smile:

15

I think Heroes is a particular bad example to use for this question, because they effectively did have shorter seasons. Heroes was fairly unique for US television in that each season was broken into smaller chunks, which I think they called “Volumes.” Each volume was set up and produced like its own season, with its own premiere and finale events.

Season 1 (23 episodes)
Volume I - 11 episodes, aired from September 25th to December 4th
Volume II - 7 episodes, aired from January 22nd to March 4
Volume III - 5 episodes, aired from April 23rd to May 21st

Season 2 (only 11 episodes due to the writer’s strike, IIRC)
Volume I - 11 episodes, aired from September 24th to December 3rd

Season 3 (25 episodes)
Volume I - 13 episodes, aired from September 22nd to December 15th
Volume II - 12 episodes, aired from February 2nd to April 27th

Season 4 (19 episodes)
Volume I - 12 episodes, aired from September 21st to November 30th
Volume II - 7 episodes, aired from January 4th to February 8th

Each volume was aired as a single continuous block with no breaks, except for Season 3 when both volumes had a single skipped week each. Each volume was generally pretty stand-alone, beginning with its own two-hour premiere event and ending with a much-hyped finale.

Of all recent major network shows, Heroes is the one most structured like British shows.

16

Shorter seasons means you can try a complete season (of 6 or 8 episodes) of a new series with a relatively limited budget (but all but the most popular BBC series look like they have a much lower budget than US TV).

I doubt the BBC had started Red Dwarf or Being Human if it’d cost twice the money.

17

I doubt it. We have a long history in the USA of good dramas and comedies that ran 39 episodes back before the late 60s. Writers and actors have in some respects outpriced themselves.

Sure back in the day actors and writers made great, even good money but it hardly translates to what it is today. Even being on a medicore show will guarantee you huge monetary success. Not so back then. Even a good sized hit would only guarantee you, nothing but the next job. (And a nice but not overly rich lifestyle)

Look at the Simpsons, still one of the best shows on TV, but the quality is all over the place, because there are far too many writers and the person(s) supposedly co-ordinating the shows doesn’t do a good job and it shows in the continuity from show to show.

You would still have to pay actors and writers top dollar and that’s the problem. If you made six shows, these actors would make less and do other projects. Same with the writers, so you would have them working the same amount. We need BETTER writers and actors.

Look at YouTube. I can find original and parody videos there that are hysterical. Oh sure 95% of it is a thousand times worse than TV, but the remaining five could give TV a run for its money. This shouldn’t be.

Look at the Big Bang Theory, it’s possible to have 20+ decent episodes if you try.

18

Some shows would certainly benefit from shorter runs. But some will be crap even if the runs were shorter. How much would, say, 2 1/2 Men be improved? If According to Jim had had shorter runs, would it have been a comedy classic?

What would do more would be having a single writer doing each season, which is common for British shows.

19

Just curious…

In Canada or the U.S., a typical T.V. show generally has the same time slot all year round. So if it’s 9:00 on a Thursday and I turn to NBC, I’ll generally be watching “The Office” (either a new episode or a rerun from earlier in the year). There are exceptions, of course (for instance, reality programs are rarely rerun, and networks like shuffling their schedules around a bit from time to time).

So in Britain, presumably I can watch “Peep Show” in a certain time slot for 6 weeks out of the year. But what’s in that time slot for the remaining 46 weeks? Seven other random T.V. programs? Or a mix of “Peep Show” reruns (one of six episodes from the most recent series) and other programs? None of the above?

My answer to the original question: All T.V. programs should quit while they’re ahead (from America or Britain or Lesotho – it doesn’t matter), of course. But whether that’s after 6 episodes or 106 episodes depends on the show.

20

Why does it have to be all or nothing? Why can’t both exist?

Cable TV, as shown above, has realized that they don’t have to have a long season, necessarily, so why doesn’t network TV realize it? All they have to do is identify certain slots, and during the TV season, they could probably run three short series’ during that time.