[tomjen3]

That and one of the great benefits of Netflix was that you could watch multiple seasons of a show, and that a season was 20 ish episodes.

Now they do 7 episodes and call it a season and frequently their shows only have one or two seasons.

[latexr]

Short seasons are perfectly valid and have existed since before Netflix. I remember watching British TV shows in which a season consisted of six half-hour episodes, and feeling that more (and more interesting) things had happened in that time frame than a USA season of 24 one-hour episodes.

These days that’s even more of a plus. When someone recommends something to watch the first thing I check is how many seasons it’s up to, then the number of episodes, then the runtime. Shows with too many seasons of too many too long episodes are immediately ignored.

[OJFord]

And they have so many (non-'original') where they only have a few series available at the end or in the middle. I don't understand the licencing/purchasing decision that can lead to that. Seems to happen far too often for it to be different studios/licencors, obviously that happens sometimes.

BBC's QI is one example. I understand new series not being available on Netflix (in the UK) as the BBC now have their own subscription platform. But it's not just that, because Netflix don't have the earliest ones either, just a seemingly random set in the middle, perhaps even non-contiguous.

[nmz]

Seems like a bad example, QI doesn't have a storyline ergo you don't need earlier seasons.

[OJFord]

That's an argument for it not mattering, maybe, but still not a reason to do it?

[nmz]

Why would you willingly not diversify your portfolio?

Buy what you can when you can afford it. It seems like good business strategy?

[lotsofpulp]

I found that to be one of the drawbacks of Netflix, and all other streaming services. A story that could easily be told in 100min or a few hours takes 10+ hours to slog through. Excessive sequences of characters getting high, or repeating tasks, or irrelevant side quests to pad the content time statistics, or make people feel like their monthly fees are worth it.

[dahwolf]

Yes, this is especially true for successful shows. They can be told in 2-3 seasons but they end up as 5 seasons. The pace of storytelling crawls to a halt in the middle seasons typically.

[mixmastamyk]

I prefer that to the older pattern—a significant fraction of phoned-in episodes out of 26 per year.