OPINION: It's time to bring back long (like, really long) TV seasons.

In 2025, I have reached my limit. And that limit comes in the shape of a TV show called Wednesday.

Netflix's most successful show (yes, really) returned on August 6. However, the season will stream in two parts, with a second half coming September 3.

This means that fans have waited three years for just four episodes.

Four episodes. Three years.

FOUR EPISODES. THREE YEARS.

There's way too much time between Netflix seasons. I do not remember what Wednesday was doing three years ago. Aang prolly grown as hell. Stranger Things are now quite normal.

— Garco (@garcoxgang) May 20, 2025

The return of Wednesday — reminder: Netflix's most-watched TV show — has got me thinking.

A lot.

Remember when TV shows had sprawling seasons that spanned 20 episodes that aired every year? Remember when you could sit on your couch, slide in a dusty DVD box set and have literally days upon days of viewing ahead?

Remember when life was fun?

No shade to Wednesday specifically — a show that I'm pretty indifferent towards — but we simply can't live like this.

Long gone are the days of teen shows like Dawson's Creek, The OC, Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill, Veronica Mars and Pretty Little Liars featuring over 20 episodes each season.

Then there were the sitcoms like Friends, Seinfeld, Will & Grace, New Girl, and Modern Family, which all boasted generous seasons, along with classic procedural dramas like Law & Order and CSI.

Watch the final scene in Friends. Post continues after video.

These days, if a season has 10 episodes, it feels like we've been spoiled. When I saw that Netflix's latest series Too Much had episodes in the double digits, I did a double-take. In this economy??

Practically any show airing on streaming platforms like Netflix, Apple TV and Prime Video runs for a maximum of 8 episodes.

But this isn't just affecting shows on streaming services. A study carried out by Parrot Analytics found that TV shows on cable networks have decreased from an average of 15.4 episodes per season in 2018 to only 10.2 in 2023.

The research found that new seasons of US scripted shows releasing more than 20 episodes had dropped from 19 per cent in 2018 to just 4.5 per cent in 2023.

In 2025, I'd hazard a guess that number has only further declined.

Shorter shows have overtaken the 2025 zeitgeist, with Dying For Sex, The White Lotus, Severance, Squid Game and The Four Seasons all being a hot topic of conversation… and having 10 or less episodes a season.

Same goes for Shogun, The Bear and Hacks, three shows that cleaned up at the 2025 Emmys and Golden Globes.

Enough with the prestige TV! We get it! Image: FX.

A big part of this comes down to the rise (and rise!) of the limited series. No, this is not a new concept but limited series have taken over streaming platforms in a big way in the past five years.

Just this year, the British limited series Adolescence became a surprise global hit, drawing 19 million viewers in its first month and reaching 145 million total viewers on Netflix.

Francesca Orsi, the Executive Vice President of HBO, can understand the appeal.

"There's a seduction to limited series," she told Los Angeles Times in 2024.

"There is something inherently easier in terms of executing a one-season show and all that it takes on thematically, and having a beginning, middle, and end to it, versus challenging an audience with a thematic center of a show that needs to exist, say, three, five, seven seasons, where it runs the risk of becoming sort of repetitive or redundant."

These series are often more likely to lure in the biggest names in Hollywood — the likes of Nicole Kidman in The Undoing, Cate Blanchett in Disclaimer, or Natalie Portman in Lady in the Lake — the kinds of booked and busy talent who wouldn't commit to a multi-season project.

And if it's not broken, why would a streaming platform like Netflix want to fix it? The breakout success of Adolescence, Baby Reindeer, Fool Me Once and The Queen's Gambit proves that these singular seasons are resonating with viewers.

Netflix is channelling a lot of its efforts into limited series. Image: Netflix.

With the high rate of show cancellations, limited series offer a lower-risk option for networks and streaming services.

Sally Catto, CBC's general manager of entertainment, factual and sports, said that networks are increasingly wanting to minimise risks.

"If you've done 15 episodes, you've taken a higher risk there than if you do fewer episodes," Catto told City News in 2024.

Catto added that viewers' attention spans have narrowed as they've become accustomed to shorter, serialised seasons.

"Audiences today have so many choices and so much content that there is an interest in, 'Let's get in, let's watch, let's get out. OK, let's now watch the next show that we have lined up.'"

But aside from limited series, overall this is all a symptom of the industry changing — simply put, TV is far less profitable than it was in the years when 20-plus seasons reigned.

'Take me back!' Image: NBC.

The biggest reason for the TV industry's financial woes is the dramatic shift in how audiences consume content.

It's not a huge shock to learn that streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime have transformed viewing habits. Viewers now expect on-demand, ad-free, personalised content, but this has decimated traditional TV subscriptions and the industry's core revenue streams.

Advertising revenue has plummeted as brands shift budgets to targeted digital platforms — for instance, Australian TV ad revenue dropped 8.1 per cent to June 2024, with networks like Nine and Seven West Media reporting significant fall despite stable audiences.

Streaming platforms, which are less reliant on ad revenue, have no incentive to keep viewers watching for as many episodes as possible — unlike traditional networks.

Then there's the matter of syndication: the old episode model was driven by the need to reach 100 episodes quickly for syndication profits. With streaming originals not relying on syndication, this incentive has disappeared.

Of course, younger viewers, in particular, are less likely to watch traditional TV. They lean towards streaming, social media, and user-generated content on platforms like YouTube and TikTok. This generational shift means the traditional TV audience is only shrinking.

The industry has also been rattled by the 2023 writers' and actors' strikes in the US, which caused major production delays and increased costs, with ripple effects felt globally.

Add to that, the pandemic in 2020 led to shutdowns, delayed releases and a backlog of projects.

So yes, there are a lot of factors at play and they all point to a 'quality over quantity' approach to TV going forward.

But this is where I have an issue: why is there the assumption that quantity means a lack of quality? For the 20-plus-episode seasons that were commonplace two decades back, these TV shows were some of the funniest and most iconic in history.

Sure, Friends did do an annual 'play old clips' episode each season, as other shows aired bottle instalments that some might call 'filler episodes', but that was part of the journey.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy limited series and short shows like The Bear and Bridgerton as much as the next person, but in the eternal words of the Old El Paso girl with the c*nty bob: "Why can't we have both?"

'Por qué no los dos?' Image: Netflix.

Reality TV has only proven that audiences have an unsatiated appetite for long-running seasons.

In Australia, Married at First Sight is still a ratings juggernaut. In the US, shows like Love Island and Survivor are some of the highest rated.

These reality shows often feature 40 episodes a season. MAFS Australia has only expanded its episodes each season to run for multiple months and air almost every evening.

It makes sense that reality seasons are expanding as scripted TV shrinks: reality TV is generally cheaper to produce due to lower production costs associated with reality TV, plus the absence of high-cost actors, sets, costumes and writers.

But either way, people want to watch loads of episodes. That's just facts.

Grey's Anatomy remains one of only a handful of long-running shows that still airs between 18 to 25 episodes each season. Meanwhile, The Pitt was a breakout new show of 2025 and offered 15 episodes for its first season.

Hopefully, this is a sign of times slightly shifting, but until there are more shows dropping more than eight episodes at a time, I will be clutching my 10 DVD box-sets of Friends for dear life.

Feature image: Fox/NBC.