Instant gratification: are today's TV shows really too long?

As viewing habits change in the streaming era, viewers and critics increasingly complain about drawn-out programmes. But things were far more meandering in the 70s and 80s

From the perspective of 2018, it seems crazy that television shows used to be so long. The Sopranos ran 13 episodes a year, as did did Breaking Bad. The first series of Prison Break was 22 episodes long. The punishing third series of Lost – the series that crawled on so interminably that it made the exasperated showrunners force the network to announce an endpoint – had 23 episodes. And then there is 24 which, well, you can count.

Weirder still, no one minded. It was standard industry practise, stretching back through the 80s (The A-Team: 25 episodes a year), the 70s (M*A*S*H: 27 episodes), the 60s (Star Trek: 29 episodes) and beyond (Gunsmoke, 1955-75: a staggering 39 episodes). Television was a sausage factory back then, valuing quantity over quality. People put up with it because, well, what else was there to do? Read a book? Yuck.

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from The Guardian http://ift.tt/2FF87MU