Extended hiatuses are just one of the new ways we now watch television shows (although you can’t even technically call them television shows since many you watch on your watch). What a nice luxury for the production team. They’re not on constant deadline.
But asking audiences to wait a year and sometimes longer comes with a big risk. By the time you get back they may have lost interest. In that year interim another darling or three might have come along. Ask any restaurant owner how fickle the public is.
It’s hard for a show to build momentum and losing that momentum can be the kiss of death.
Also, expectations become much higher when viewers have had to wait. If the hiatus is only over the summer the viewer might watch the season premier and go “That was okay,” but if he had to wait eighteen months he might say this about the exact same episode: “Really? I waited all that time for THAT?”
So I ask producers (and the networks and streaming services that distribute the shows), do you really need THAT much time to prepare a new season? Could you shave off three months? Or six? For sixty years broadcast network shows churned out 24 episodes a year (and sometimes 39) and produced some series with extraordinary quality. You really need a year-and-a-half to make ten? (Some shows with hugely ambitious production requirements like GAME OF THRONES, sure, but most of these shows don’t have dragons.)
I have another fear for down the line. Industry strikes. Audiences have been accustomed to seeing their shows on a regular basis, and any extended interruption was potentially very damaging to the networks. Well, not anymore. If a strike means the Fall Season starts a month later, big whoop.
But, that’s the world we now live in. However, I’m sure if we wait another year and three-months it will all change.
from By Ken Levine
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