There is no question that how people view television is vastly different now than before the boom of streaming. But I would argue, that what people are seeking to watch is and has always been relatively stable. It’s only our methods of consumption which has changed.
Growing up, I lived in the age of network (and cable) show supremacy. There were the shows you eagerly waited to watch when it aired or saved up your tape/TiVo space to record because they were new and fresh, they might be limited in episodes (but if a successful show, not for long), and were likely to be the shows you were talking about with people. Today these types of shows are representative of any new release show on any platform. They don’t individually receive the same viewership these shows used to because the quantity of shows now is much greater. It was also not uncommon for these shows to have a problem with retention between seasons, with most dropping viewers each season and only break-out shows growing in numbers. This trend is especially magnified in today’s TV landscape, with almost all shows taking significantly longer breaks between episodes because even broadcast shows (network cable) rarely have more than 10 episodes a season now, making the wait between seasons longer, even in years not affected by strikes. And streaming shows, especially ones that drop all their episodes at once tend to have longer turnarounds. This leads to fewer episodes overall for shows but longer runs than shows in the past.
Growing up outside of the few shows airing new episodes that I would watch the vast majority of my TV viewing was made up of shows in syndication, or reruns. I fell in love with Xena and The X-Files because they were on every single day when I would come home after school, I got to watch over 100 episodes of Xena and Gabrielle and 200 episodes of Mulder and Scully. And, the numbers don’t lie, that is overwhelming what people are still seeking out on these streaming apps, with Suits doing massive numbers last year, and why streamers make big deals about acquiring titles with large episode catalogs. Back when the streamer was launching as HBOMax, before it became MAX, being the exclusive streaming home for Friends was an important part of its launch, as The Office was important for the launch of Peacock.
There’s a tendency to reduce Gen Z and Alpha because of a consumption of social media as not having attention spans. But that is as reductive as it is boring. Like every generation, they want to get lost in character, story, and messy, messy drama. They are finding the people who make regular TikTok stories as a new avenue to fulfill this need, but many are also finding it like I did, through re-runs, only theirs can be pulled up on an app. They are watching these series with big catalogs. They are loving Gilmore Girls, Friends, and The Office.
Production budgets on TV have gone up a lot in recent years. Part of that is because it is hard to spread out the costs of big items (like building sets) over a smaller episode order, and smaller episode orders started getting made because there was this perceived perception that audiences needed TV to look more “filmic.” But, at the end of the day, the most consumed and valuable shows for these streamers are the ones that were produced before production budgets ballooned on anything other than cast salaries. I hope they do well to remember that because most of the current shows being made will not have catalogs anywhere close to 100 episodes by the end of their run. Something to keep in mind as we look ahead at renewals and cancelations.
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