A Fluffy Petty Rant About Something Unimportant

Do you think I talk too much about politics and religion and heavy stuff that you probably disagree with? I'm about to rant about something I'm sure many of my readers can get on board with.

Streaming television is the pits.

(At this point I pull out my conceptual rocking chair and plant my conceptual butt in it. Now imagine me slowly rocking as I say this.)

When I was a kid, I watched plenty of TV shows that were broadcast over the airwaves via major networks. The seasons of TV followed a regular pattern. Each fall a new season of a show would debut. For the next several months a new episode was shown one night a week, every week, until the spring. At this point, the show would go on hiatus and reruns of the show would be broadcast in that time slot. Sometimes this wasn't a bad thing. We could rewatch our favorite episodes or catch up on ones we missed. Maybe we could use the rerun season to watch the reruns of shows on other channels we didn't watch during the regular season. If the show's ratings were successful, the producers would tape an entire new season of shows that would be shown the following fall. 

When a season of Happy Days or M.A.S.H. or Mork and Mindy or Cheers or Roseanne or Seinfeld ended, we knew we would get more of them come September. If a season ended on a cliffhanger, we would remember what it was and we would still have a little of that excitement lingering in our brains. The schedule was predictable. It was reliable. It kept us hanging long enough to make us miss it, but not long enough to make us forget it. 

(Okay, young people. Before you think I'm really old, I am not so old that I didn't have cable. Broadcast TV was not my only option. I had cable starting from my early adolescence, but back in those days, cable was more for movies or more niche programming.)

Then one day Netflix, the service we used to watch movies and our favorite TV reruns (or in my case, entire series of old britcoms), decided to get into the new content game. It began producing its own TV shows to compete with the broadcast and cable shows. It started to change the way we watched TV. It would release an entire series at once that we could all conveniently watch at our leisure. As other streaming services came on the scene, they began to release new content as well. 

(I could go on a whole other rant now about how streaming services have decided to cash in on making every bit of content into a new subscription service, but I'll save it for another day. I may also have to rant about the commercials.)

Here was the catch. Streaming services aren't obligated to produce shows on a network schedule. There is no rule that a new season has to start in the fall after only a few months off in the summer. The producers of streaming shows can make new seasons when they feel like it. 

It's driving me nuts.

This week Kevin and I finished up the first season of Widow's Bay. The season finale isn't a major cliffhanger, but the season ends with unanswered questions and unresolved problems. If this were an old-style TV series, I would be able to see how it all unfolds in another month or two. 

This isn't an old-style TV series though. The producers are promising us a new season a year from now if we're lucky. We may have to wait until 2028. 

This isn't the first time a streaming TV show has tortured its viewers like this. The "kids" on Stranger Things could have played their own parents by the time the series ended given the huge gaps of time between seasons.

Then there was the three-year wait between Season 1 and Season 2 of Severance. That took so long I almost forgot what the cliffhanger was. Severance gets a little pass because there was a writers' strike happening at the time of production along with some other logistical issues, but what's the excuse for the wait for Season 3? While the image of a dirty and bloodied Mark and Helly walking hand in hand through the corridor with Gemma banging on the door will be forever imprinted in my brain, I am bound to forget the reasons behind it by the time Season 3 is released.

Why do I have to wait for this? Why did I wait an entire year for new seasons of The Bear or The Handmaid's Tale?

Networks have been able to produce TV shows regularly for the past 80 years. You can't tell me producing content is suddenly impossible. The technology is better now. It should be easier, not harder, to produce quality content. 

Is it because the billionaires who run the networks don't want to pay people to do the production work? Perhaps there isn't enough staff to create new shows in a timely fashion. Maybe there are so many broadcast, streaming, and cable TV shows there aren't enough people to staff them all. The entertainment industry has stretched itself too thin. That seems hard to believe given American's insatiable appetite for entertainment and the number of aspiring actors, writers, and producers out there. There is no shortage of talent. There is only a shortage of media companies willing to pay them what they are worth.

I am sure someone out there reading this will want to remind me that streaming services have an advantage I didn't have as a kid. I can watch a streaming show as many times as I want. I no longer need to wait for rerun season or remember to program the VCR. I can watch the entire first season of Widow's Bay again tonight and next week go through the first two seasons of Severance. In fact, it would probably help me to not only remember what happened in a previous season, but pick up on some of the nuances, hints, and Easter eggs I didn't notice when I watched the season the first time.  Why don't I do that? It is because I now have so many options for new content, I no longer want to bother with watching anything twice?

That's on me, isn't it? As a child and as a teen I never had to wait too long for the next season of my favorite shows. But TV consumption wasn't only about new shows in those days. I would come home from school and as soon as my homework was finished I would be glued to the TV for the syndicated shows on the local TV stations. How many times did I see the same episodes of The Brady Bunch, Gilligan's Island, I Love Lucy, What's Happening?, Good Times, All in the Family, or Little House on the Prairie? (There were a dozen others I watched during summer break as well.) When did I start seeking so much novelty in my TV habits? 

(Because I grew up and stopped living under my grandmother's anxious, watchful eye and now have other forms of entertainment other than watching TV?)

(I feel at this point I should tell anyone who didn't know me as a kid that I was also a voracious reader. My brain is not complete mush from too much TV.)

I should also remember network TV, produced in the traditional seasonal format still exists. Not all of it interests me, but when it does, I can watch it with regularly scheduled seasons. (Abbot Elementary, I am grateful for your existence.)

Maybe my consumption habits have changed, but I still stand by my belief the entertainment industry has changed for the worse. Streaming services seem designed to make us all pay more for less content. If I think about it, if I knew when the next season of my current streaming show would be, I might unsubscribe from that service until the season returned. As long as they keep me in the dark about when my shows will come back, I will keep subscribing.