From Netflix to HBO, Streaming’s 8-Episode Formula Is Making the Same TV Mistake

Published Sep 4, 2026, 7:19 AM EDT Michael Hein has been covering entertainment, fandom news, and trending topics since 2016 on outlets including Rogues Portal, PopCulture.com, and ComicBook.com. He has provided live coverage of red carpet premieres, conventions, and up-fronts, and has interviewed major stars including Charles Dance, Patrick Stewart, and Chloe Sevigny. An avid fiction reader and writer, Michael has been diving deep into all the biggest book-to-screen adaptations of the last decade, from Game of Thrones to Foundation. It's beginning to feel unfair to discuss and analyze eight-episode streaming series in the same context we once critiqued 22-episode broadcast TV shows. There's a lot of space between those two examples, and both have their merits, but the more they diverge, the more they feel like completely different artistic mediums. Streaming shows increasingly feel like extended movies, and they're under immense pressure to not just succeed, but completely take over the pop culture conversation, or else be canceled. This leaves little time for the slow-burn character development and storytelling that once made TV great. Audiences actually seem to be aware of this, yet streamers continue to kneecap great shows for their own convenience. Chances are you've fallen in love with a show in the last few years only to wait two years for another installment of eight — or even fewer — episodes. By comparison, the old broadcast model consistently delivered 20 or more episodes every year on a reliable schedule. In some ways, it's great that streaming has allowed TV creators to experiment with their medium, but the goal has not been an artistic renaissance. Streamers are shortening shows and extending the waits between seasons so that they can cut their losses sooner, only investing in guaranteed hits. The worst part is, a few select shows are still thriving on the old model, proving that audiences still crave TV the way it was. Shows Take Time to Find an Audience Over the last two decades, streamers have cast countless fandoms adrift, with no hope that their favorite characters and stories will ever get the justice they deserve. Streamers make the majority of their money from subscriptions, which means their executives only want to invest in shows that they can prove are pulling in new subscribers or retaining existing ones. Ironically, the industry's unpopular shift towards ad-support could mitigate this issue somewhat, but it will never bring us back to the old paradigm which gave rise to so many of our favorite shows. Before streaming, broadcast shows generally produced 18 to 24 episodes to air throughout the fall and spring TV season. More episodes meant more ad time the network could sell, and even if every episode didn't feel like a blockbuster movie, it had all the right actors playing all the right characters on the right sets. It's often said that constraints and limitations drive innovation and creativity, and that was clearly the case here. Those cheaper episodes are what made TV magical — they allowed characters and relationships to develop, and they made the world feel more real and lived-in. It's disingenuous to call them "filler." Episodes like this defined TV as a creative medium. It's also disingenuous to claim that audiences wanted this change to shorter series, or chose it in some way. Audiences watch what they're interested in, when they're interested in it — streaming simply gave corporations a greater ability to track their habits. It has always been absurd to expect a brand-new show to capture a massive audience within two weeks of its premiere — especially without the back-to-back scheduling and ad placement of broadcast TV. By a modern streamer's standards, Friends might have been canceled in its first season, and Law & Order might be an obscure cult classic with just a few episodes. These shows need time to build up a reputation and find their audiences. That's not theoretical, either. Just last year, ABC's High Potential — one of the only broadcast comedies airing now — saw a massive surge in viewers in its second season. The crime dramedy starring Kaitlin Olson had 21.48 million total viewers for its Season 2 premiere, counting those who watched it on ABC as well as those who watched on Hulu, Disney+, or other official digital platforms over the next 35 days. That's a shining example of how streaming can boost the existing broadcast model. High Potential had 16 episodes in its first season and 18 episodes in its second, but it's not clear yet how many episodes will be in the upcoming Season 3. The TV Format Deserves More Open Experimentation Image via ABC There are many upsides to streaming, and many great shows that have thrived with only eight episodes every two years. Streaming has allowed writers and producers to experiment with their formats — varying the runtimes of episodes within seasons, utilizing enormous budgets for cinematic special effects, and subverting expectations when it comes to A-list casting. Still, all this experimentation has been in service of saving money for the streamers and making things work in a way that is most convenient and cost-effective for them. Keep in mind that streaming seasons have only gotten shorter since the format kicked off. It's hard to imagine now, but the Defenders family of series made by Netflix and Marvel boasted 13-episodes per season for most of its run. It's not surprising for corporations to watch their bottom line, but they're missing a golden opportunity to find out what audiences really want — rather than trying to get audiences to accept what they can already offer. Streamers could be betting big on bold new ideas and formats in collaboration with creators. They could utilize the vast amount of data they collect on viewers' habits, along with focus groups and test screenings. It might take some time and cost them a few losses at first, but streamers could be pinpointing exactly what makes a show great and supercharging it, rather than trying to persuade us all that we've always wanted to binge-watch an eight-hour movie. To do that, streamers will need to make some bottle episodes, some filler, and some slow-burns. They'll need to trust creators and audiences to work things out over time, and accept that the line graphs won't go skyrocketing up all at once. Very few shows are at their best with an average of eight episodes every two years. In order to care about these stories, we need to spend time immersed in them, and there's no replacement for that. Viewers have known this all along, it's time for streamers to accept it as well.