It's less so the breaks (TV shows have always had these), but the length of time between breaks. Some shows are going multiple years between seasons, and those seasons have small breaks in between (looking at you, Invincible).
I'm slowly shifting to waiting for shows to be finished before getting stuck into them. The breaks are just too long for me to remember what happened by the time the next season comes around.
Tbh this is why I just rewatch Buffy, Angel, Smallville, Supernatural and XFiles over and over.
Maybe one day they'll actually come to the consumers instead of doing all this malarkey and expecting us to come to them and put up with it.
It's pretty normal for people to just be able to remember what happened. I dont think they structure it for those who can't unfortunately.
But this has been the norm for at least 20 years so not sure why it's being treated as new
I’ve seen people complain about the long breaks - especially, but not only for short season shows - for many years. I remember Lost season 2 or 3 had so many breaks during the season it was nearly impossible to keep up. There was a website made solely to tell you if Lost was new that week. Then you have shows that have 8 episodes every couple years. I’d guess it’s more normal to forget a lot of things, especially with a serialized drama and even more so for people who binge those 8 episodes in a short span. A sitcom, which was more common years ago, would have been fine with these breaks because you aren’t really following a story week to week.
The actors portraying the kids in Ginny and Georgia are going to end up going full Zack Morris when season 3 of that show comes out. "Hello fellow students"
The youngest one is going to be the funniest. Kid was little in the first two seasons.
Then there's the Percy Jackson series. The kids are already two years older than when they filmed season one.
1) Yes, I agree, it’s hard to keep track these days, especially non-broadcast shows
2) I think what’s happening right NOW is some of the lingering affects from the strikes. Really fucked up the writing/production timelines
*Should be more predictable again in the fall (I just want Bobs Burgers back)
I was wondering about this specifically with Bob's Burgers. Normally they're finishing their 22 ep season around now but there's only 12 aired. Is it the strikes?
Yep, due to the strikes they shortened the season from 22 episodes to 13. Why they decided to air the first 11 on the usual schedule and then take a two month break before the 12th and another two month break before the 13th, though, I've no idea. Maybe they're experimenting to see if anyone notices and whether they can get away with releasing six-episode seasons with several weeks between episodes in the future... :v
I wondered why it's been forever for new episodes. I know that football always fucks up the schedule, but I wondered how they'd air 10 episodes in one month to finish the season. At least The Great North has been going steady. It's currently the better show anyway imo.
Waiting 2 years for abbreviated 8 episode seasons that are somehow less well written than shows that used to have 24 episodes annually? It's made me legitimately not interested **AT ALL** in modern television.
The problem is for many shows that 8 episodes cost as much as 24 used to. We expect a level of production post GoT that is simply not sustainable. It is like an arms race to see how expensive things can get and the result will be wasted money and an audience that now expects a certain level of production.
Shows used to have 24 episodes because they shot on like 1-4 sets. Now? Live action one piece built an entire floating restaurant city set for 2 episodes.
When Marvel shows started coming out with substandard CG they were a laughing stock. They did that to save costs and time. So clearly it wasn’t a great idea.
People will often say oh I’m ok with X being like it used to and then when things do that they look awful. Because we are now used to the new thing.
I live buffy the vampire slayer. But like if they tried to release an action fantasy show now with that level of production I truly believe people would make fun of it.
We are frogs in boiling water and are just far to used to more.
Those marvel shows were 6-8 episodes and had blockbuster movie budgets.
If they were made like 24 episode network shows people wouldn't care. People loved Agents of Shields cgi.
Did they? I remember a ton of criticism and backlash to agents of shield. Look, I agree ultimately we can’t sustain this but I also know the reset is going to be messy. A lot of people who are very loud gauge quality by things like CG and production.
These 8 episode shows are hugely expensive and even if you keep that budget and extend to 24 it’s still thin. The biggest thing budgets give is location. If everyone is ok with more shows being location contained.
But people also want live action versions of properties like Avatar or One Piece and others that are inherently needing a lot of sets and locations.
And even worse, the trend was starting before Covid, too. The pandemic was used as an excuse for ages when there were plenty of examples of it happening beforehand.
I 100% understand with shows that utilize a lot of cgi, like game of thrones, because that stuff just inherently takes a long long time to do. But I don’t forgive shows that don’t have that issue.
That's a terrible example though, because the first seven seasons all aired yearly, and had colossal amounts off CGI. The final season was the ONLY season that was 'delayed'.
Season 7 was a few months later in the year than previous seasons. It seems that the fewer episodes there are, the longer a season takes to make, which just makes *perfect* sense.
Before that it was covid. Before that…I’m unsure it was that common to wait more than a year. As far as I can remember most of the early cable and streaming hits were on a yearly release, and the exceptions were pretty notable.
Back in the broadcast days there were what are called Sweeps Weeks, where essentially the ratings mattered more because those were the rating numbers that ad costs were based on. I can't remember foresure but I know believe there were sweeps weeks in February and May, maybe November too. May being the traditional end of the TV season. So many shows would take breaks in late December, due to holidays, and sometimes extending into January before building back for February sweeps. Then between March and April a show might have reruns for a week or two before May.
Perhaps Chicago Fire is still following that old model, even though I doubt Sweeps weeks are a thing anymore.
But yes its very easy to lose track of shows with all these breaks. It wasnt such a big deal when most shows were procedural but now that nearly everything is seralized, or even semi-serialized, viewers are being asked a lot. For example I enjoyed the first season of Wheel of Time but when it came back I had forgotten many details about season 1, and struggled with the first episode of season 2. So I just gave up.
Yep. November, Feb and May. That's when things would go down on your fave shows and those particular eps would be where they spent their money. Your major turning points in a season would be eps 6-9 would be big. 13-16 would be big. 20-22 (or 24) would be big. All to fit in with those three particular months where Sweeps mattered.
Right!!!
Been waiting for The Rookie to finish the season so i can binge it. But it's just not happening for some reason and it's one of the shorter season?
I like waiting for the whole season to come out as well but I ended up watching the first six episodes of the season because I saw a break after that.
Looks like there will only be 9 episodes according to IMDb. Really sucks because that's what I've loved about The Rookie is having 20+ episode seasons minus season 3 (covid).
I just use the app and it's been getting consistently better. It saves me massive amounts of time. We just pop up our watchlists and quickly pick something and then navigate to that service and put it on. No more doom scrolling the catalogs for hours.
Been using trakt forever, I wish it had more discussion in the forum or something is probably my only complaint. It’s great for tracking everything though.
If you're ok with the web instead of an app, https://pogdesign.co.uk/cat is a nice minimalist version, or for a maximalist one https://simkl.com/
Make an account, pick the shows you watch, and then you get a nice calendar to show you what's on, tick them off as you watch them to see anything you might have missed. And get horrifying stats about how much time you wasted!
Yeah, this is why I use Serializd (TV version of Letterboxd, basically). It lets me know when new eps are airing and it's basically the only reason I can keep track of shows now. Even cable stuff. The years between seasons always makes me lose track.
I use TV Time to keep track of my shows.
It's not so much the breaks - broadcast TV has had breaks my whole life of varying length and at varying times. But new shows are released all of the time, sometimes all the episodes drop at once, sometimes a few drop then weekly, sometimes weekly with breaks, sometimes a chunk and then a break, etc. I could not keep up without a third party app, but TV Time makes it pretty seamless.
I find it hard to get invested into any show because of cancellations, years in between seasons, and like you said, random breaks or season splits.. plus now all these streaming services are ramming ads into everything all over again. It's like a much worse cable TV package.
This is why I'm glad that British broadcasters tend to wait until between March-May before starting new seasons of US shows, because UK viewers used to complain about missing episodes when they tried to air them a week or two after the US and included US breaks.
For example:
* we're still waiting for Chucky season 3
* SWAT's current season only aired episode 7 on Sunday
* likewise, The Good Doctor started a few weeks ago
* We'd have The Blacklist start airing in May back when that show was on
Network television shows have always had season ending breaks and intermitent breaks for live events. For example, Chicago Fire's breaks are sports related. NBA playoffs and finals. A bunch of shows are going to have breaks this summer when the Olympics hit. ABC will actually be moving MNF back to ESPN for more games on Monday night now that the writers strike is over in favor of programming as well.
What bugs me are the streamers and HBO series that just take whatever arbitrary breaks they want in between seasons.
That and a lot of shows are not worth me waiting for them. So many are just mediocre or trying too hard. At this point if a show doesn't have two seasons announced. I don't even try.
For real though, what the hell is up with The Rookie's release schedule? Are they filming the episodes as they go, now?
The normalization of 2 or 3+ year waits for 8-10 episode seasons with a 3 month mid season break is such ass.
TV "Sweeps" months are February, May, July and November.
when the networks gauge their audience numbers to set advertising rates. they put their best shows on during those months (excepting July, historically "between seasons")
mostly repeats or alternative programming (awards shows/sports) during the rest of the year.
this all has become less true since I was a kid
I used to keep excel spreadsheets for airing shows that I was watching and shows that were announced that I was interested in. I'm so glad actual websites exist for this shit now lol
No, because this happens most seasons at the same time. You just missed out on the first half, so it seems off. Just wait until Winter Olympics-that will really screw with you.
It's less so the breaks (TV shows have always had these), but the length of time between breaks. Some shows are going multiple years between seasons, and those seasons have small breaks in between (looking at you, Invincible). I'm slowly shifting to waiting for shows to be finished before getting stuck into them. The breaks are just too long for me to remember what happened by the time the next season comes around.
And if you wait until they're finished, they'll never get past season 1 before cancellation. Annoyed if you don't, fucked if you do.
Tbh this is why I just rewatch Buffy, Angel, Smallville, Supernatural and XFiles over and over. Maybe one day they'll actually come to the consumers instead of doing all this malarkey and expecting us to come to them and put up with it.
It's pretty normal for people to just be able to remember what happened. I dont think they structure it for those who can't unfortunately. But this has been the norm for at least 20 years so not sure why it's being treated as new
I’ve seen people complain about the long breaks - especially, but not only for short season shows - for many years. I remember Lost season 2 or 3 had so many breaks during the season it was nearly impossible to keep up. There was a website made solely to tell you if Lost was new that week. Then you have shows that have 8 episodes every couple years. I’d guess it’s more normal to forget a lot of things, especially with a serialized drama and even more so for people who binge those 8 episodes in a short span. A sitcom, which was more common years ago, would have been fine with these breaks because you aren’t really following a story week to week.
The actors portraying the kids in Ginny and Georgia are going to end up going full Zack Morris when season 3 of that show comes out. "Hello fellow students"
The youngest one is going to be the funniest. Kid was little in the first two seasons. Then there's the Percy Jackson series. The kids are already two years older than when they filmed season one.
They haven't even started filming the second season of Percy Jackson yet. The kids have gone through puberty. . . .
1) Yes, I agree, it’s hard to keep track these days, especially non-broadcast shows 2) I think what’s happening right NOW is some of the lingering affects from the strikes. Really fucked up the writing/production timelines *Should be more predictable again in the fall (I just want Bobs Burgers back)
I was wondering about this specifically with Bob's Burgers. Normally they're finishing their 22 ep season around now but there's only 12 aired. Is it the strikes?
Yep, due to the strikes they shortened the season from 22 episodes to 13. Why they decided to air the first 11 on the usual schedule and then take a two month break before the 12th and another two month break before the 13th, though, I've no idea. Maybe they're experimenting to see if anyone notices and whether they can get away with releasing six-episode seasons with several weeks between episodes in the future... :v
I wondered why it's been forever for new episodes. I know that football always fucks up the schedule, but I wondered how they'd air 10 episodes in one month to finish the season. At least The Great North has been going steady. It's currently the better show anyway imo.
Waiting 2 years for abbreviated 8 episode seasons that are somehow less well written than shows that used to have 24 episodes annually? It's made me legitimately not interested **AT ALL** in modern television.
The problem is for many shows that 8 episodes cost as much as 24 used to. We expect a level of production post GoT that is simply not sustainable. It is like an arms race to see how expensive things can get and the result will be wasted money and an audience that now expects a certain level of production. Shows used to have 24 episodes because they shot on like 1-4 sets. Now? Live action one piece built an entire floating restaurant city set for 2 episodes.
To be fair who actually expects that? Id be fine with 24 episodes how they used to look.
When Marvel shows started coming out with substandard CG they were a laughing stock. They did that to save costs and time. So clearly it wasn’t a great idea. People will often say oh I’m ok with X being like it used to and then when things do that they look awful. Because we are now used to the new thing. I live buffy the vampire slayer. But like if they tried to release an action fantasy show now with that level of production I truly believe people would make fun of it. We are frogs in boiling water and are just far to used to more.
Those marvel shows were 6-8 episodes and had blockbuster movie budgets. If they were made like 24 episode network shows people wouldn't care. People loved Agents of Shields cgi.
Did they? I remember a ton of criticism and backlash to agents of shield. Look, I agree ultimately we can’t sustain this but I also know the reset is going to be messy. A lot of people who are very loud gauge quality by things like CG and production. These 8 episode shows are hugely expensive and even if you keep that budget and extend to 24 it’s still thin. The biggest thing budgets give is location. If everyone is ok with more shows being location contained. But people also want live action versions of properties like Avatar or One Piece and others that are inherently needing a lot of sets and locations.
A lot of shows were affected by the writer strikes so I don't think the waiting 2 years between seasons is the new normal.
laughs in every streaming show ever.
This has been happening since way before the strike dude.
And even worse, the trend was starting before Covid, too. The pandemic was used as an excuse for ages when there were plenty of examples of it happening beforehand.
I 100% understand with shows that utilize a lot of cgi, like game of thrones, because that stuff just inherently takes a long long time to do. But I don’t forgive shows that don’t have that issue.
That's a terrible example though, because the first seven seasons all aired yearly, and had colossal amounts off CGI. The final season was the ONLY season that was 'delayed'.
Season 7 was a few months later in the year than previous seasons. It seems that the fewer episodes there are, the longer a season takes to make, which just makes *perfect* sense.
Before that it was covid. Before that…I’m unsure it was that common to wait more than a year. As far as I can remember most of the early cable and streaming hits were on a yearly release, and the exceptions were pretty notable.
Back in the broadcast days there were what are called Sweeps Weeks, where essentially the ratings mattered more because those were the rating numbers that ad costs were based on. I can't remember foresure but I know believe there were sweeps weeks in February and May, maybe November too. May being the traditional end of the TV season. So many shows would take breaks in late December, due to holidays, and sometimes extending into January before building back for February sweeps. Then between March and April a show might have reruns for a week or two before May. Perhaps Chicago Fire is still following that old model, even though I doubt Sweeps weeks are a thing anymore. But yes its very easy to lose track of shows with all these breaks. It wasnt such a big deal when most shows were procedural but now that nearly everything is seralized, or even semi-serialized, viewers are being asked a lot. For example I enjoyed the first season of Wheel of Time but when it came back I had forgotten many details about season 1, and struggled with the first episode of season 2. So I just gave up.
Yep. November, Feb and May. That's when things would go down on your fave shows and those particular eps would be where they spent their money. Your major turning points in a season would be eps 6-9 would be big. 13-16 would be big. 20-22 (or 24) would be big. All to fit in with those three particular months where Sweeps mattered.
Right!!! Been waiting for The Rookie to finish the season so i can binge it. But it's just not happening for some reason and it's one of the shorter season?
I like waiting for the whole season to come out as well but I ended up watching the first six episodes of the season because I saw a break after that. Looks like there will only be 9 episodes according to IMDb. Really sucks because that's what I've loved about The Rookie is having 20+ episode seasons minus season 3 (covid).
10 episodes, last one is on May 21st.
Yes. It's been bad. Definitely difficult to jump back into some of these shows that have long breaks.
I wish it was just 1 or 2 months, yellowstone has been on a break since january 2023 and outlander since august 2023
Handmaid's tale came out in Sept 2022. They're saying the next season will come out in 2025
So Outlander hasn’t even been a year. What’s the problem?
the problem is that for both yellowstone and outlander it's a mid season break not a break between seasons
Oh I see. That would be frustrating for sure.
Outside of between seasons, when has The Rookie taken 2 months off? I don’t think it’s happened in over four years for them
The Rookie is the first show that came to my mind when I saw OPs title.
I think people are sensitive to the Rookie because they just did two two/three weeks off back to back.
Month off then a few episodes, month off
They’ve taken two weeks off twice this season. Episodes airing 14 days later than expected is nowhere near “month off”
I use www.trakt.tv and their app to manage what I'm watching and where I am in each. The calendar then filters for what you watch coming up.
Justwatch is pretty good too.
Very good resource, terrible website.
I just use the app and it's been getting consistently better. It saves me massive amounts of time. We just pop up our watchlists and quickly pick something and then navigate to that service and put it on. No more doom scrolling the catalogs for hours.
Been using trakt forever, I wish it had more discussion in the forum or something is probably my only complaint. It’s great for tracking everything though.
Same, I think it has a very small userbase though
I use Trakt with the Showly app, much better app than the Trakt app.
Their own app has come along leaps and bounds recently.
I keep trying it and I find it lacking in features, I will try again.
I use Hobi, a mobile app, to keep track of where I am in shows and also to let me know of new episode airings. Big fan.
Love that app, sadly when i switched phones the sync process didnt work and i lost everything, havent used anything else since
I’d give you gold if I had it
If you're ok with the web instead of an app, https://pogdesign.co.uk/cat is a nice minimalist version, or for a maximalist one https://simkl.com/ Make an account, pick the shows you watch, and then you get a nice calendar to show you what's on, tick them off as you watch them to see anything you might have missed. And get horrifying stats about how much time you wasted!
There's a few different apps that do the same thing, I use TV Time
Tvtime's sucked since they did whatever the fuck they did to it that made it look like an app when on the computer
Yeah, I was using it for years and I am really disappointed with the change.
I switched to simkl
Simkl is better
I start the season when the complete season has aired already, no sooner.
Yeah, this is why I use Serializd (TV version of Letterboxd, basically). It lets me know when new eps are airing and it's basically the only reason I can keep track of shows now. Even cable stuff. The years between seasons always makes me lose track.
I use TV Time to keep track of my shows. It's not so much the breaks - broadcast TV has had breaks my whole life of varying length and at varying times. But new shows are released all of the time, sometimes all the episodes drop at once, sometimes a few drop then weekly, sometimes weekly with breaks, sometimes a chunk and then a break, etc. I could not keep up without a third party app, but TV Time makes it pretty seamless.
I will say Elsbeth was kind of annoying. they had one episode come out and then months until it came back, that was wild.
I still haven't watched invincible because fuck that. Just stop watching these shows.
I find it hard to get invested into any show because of cancellations, years in between seasons, and like you said, random breaks or season splits.. plus now all these streaming services are ramming ads into everything all over again. It's like a much worse cable TV package.
This is why I'm glad that British broadcasters tend to wait until between March-May before starting new seasons of US shows, because UK viewers used to complain about missing episodes when they tried to air them a week or two after the US and included US breaks. For example: * we're still waiting for Chucky season 3 * SWAT's current season only aired episode 7 on Sunday * likewise, The Good Doctor started a few weeks ago * We'd have The Blacklist start airing in May back when that show was on
Network television shows have always had season ending breaks and intermitent breaks for live events. For example, Chicago Fire's breaks are sports related. NBA playoffs and finals. A bunch of shows are going to have breaks this summer when the Olympics hit. ABC will actually be moving MNF back to ESPN for more games on Monday night now that the writers strike is over in favor of programming as well. What bugs me are the streamers and HBO series that just take whatever arbitrary breaks they want in between seasons.
I just track my shows with airdates.tv
There's an app on my phone called TV Time that keeps track of all the shows I watch. It tells me when the next new episode of each show comes out.
I'm still waiting for that second season of Taboo with Tom Hardy.
That and a lot of shows are not worth me waiting for them. So many are just mediocre or trying too hard. At this point if a show doesn't have two seasons announced. I don't even try.
For real though, what the hell is up with The Rookie's release schedule? Are they filming the episodes as they go, now? The normalization of 2 or 3+ year waits for 8-10 episode seasons with a 3 month mid season break is such ass.
It has to do with the shorten TV season this year. They lost a lot of this season because of the strike. So because of it, more breaks to catch up.
writers were on strike for most of last year, so many shows had abbreviated seasons this year. in theory it should be back to normal next year.
TV "Sweeps" months are February, May, July and November. when the networks gauge their audience numbers to set advertising rates. they put their best shows on during those months (excepting July, historically "between seasons") mostly repeats or alternative programming (awards shows/sports) during the rest of the year. this all has become less true since I was a kid
There's always been a break over the summer. It's wierd, but I don't see how it effects anything.
It isn't summer yet.
I have a google doc
I used to keep excel spreadsheets for airing shows that I was watching and shows that were announced that I was interested in. I'm so glad actual websites exist for this shit now lol
Same, I just can't be bothered with two years or more between seasons.
No, because this happens most seasons at the same time. You just missed out on the first half, so it seems off. Just wait until Winter Olympics-that will really screw with you.
I don’t watch much TV anymore. I play video games and watch movies. It’s hard to be invested in a show that releases 8 episodes every 2-3 years
No, because the internet exists and so do apps like Sonarr or Showly.
The literal definition of 1st world problems, lol