Why the End of the Prestige TV Era Could Benefit Everyone

As Hollywood’s new age of austerity proceeds, two things are all but certain: The number of shows produced is going to shrink, and the heyday of prestige TV is over.

High-quality, intelligent programming will likely always have a place on streaming, essential as it is to driving positive word of mouth for a platform (including, but not limited to, awards attention). But it seems reasonable to assume TV will start to look a lot more like current film studio slates: IP-based blockbuster content will dominate, with a handful of awards-bait titles thrown in to keep the Emmys coming.

But there’s a better route forward, one that would benefit all sides economically while keeping TV from sliding into a fallow creative period. Streamers and writers alike would benefit from a return to something resembling the network TV model of old: shows with broader appeal, less extravagant budgets, longer seasons and, yes, weekly releases.

There are several reasons why this could be the proverbial rising tide that lifts all boats, but let’s tackle the most counterintuitive part first: higher episode counts.

TV seasons have gotten shorter and shorter over time, drastically shrinking from the 22-to-25-episode days of network TV. Indeed, of the scripted TV seasons produced by major SVODs over the past three years, around half consisted of eight or fewer episodes, according to data from Luminate Film & TV.

The conventional wisdom goes that producing fewer episodes per season allowed studios to produce more shows, ushering in the age of peak TV. But those studios are now poised to make fewer shows, and will need new strategies to combat subscriber churn and keep viewers hooked.

With the binge-release model already trending downward, longer seasons, with episodes released weekly, could help mitigate churn. Viewers would feel they’re getting a bit more content in exchange for fewer new titles, and would keep returning to the service for longer periods of time to watch new episodes. Not for nothing, longer seasons would also boost hit shows’ viewing time metrics, bringing in more ad revenue from users on AVOD plans.

Studios would likely protest that more episodes would drive up budgets, but this need not necessarily be the case. Where companies once made fewer episodes to allow for more titles, that dynamic could work in reverse: Fewer shows being produced could allow those that get made to have more episodes.

An additional trade-off would be making fewer expensive limited series and VFX-filled genre fare, which could more than make up the cost of additional episodes for more modestly scaled shows.

Streamers, of course, likely wouldn’t want to exchange the viewership of “Stranger Things” for, say, that of “The Bear,” but spending so extravagantly only puts more pressure on every title to deliver extravagant success — an impossible goal. (TV executives, just ask your friends in the film business about this.)

Furthermore, consumers may have grown accustomed to blockbuster entertainment at home, but the success of many less expensive, network-esque shows on Netflix — major hits this year include “The Night Agent,” “Ginny & Georgia,” “Virgin River” and “The Lincoln Lawyer” — proves there’s still a place for such series in the TV landscape.

Longer seasons should also be appealing to writers as they begin work under the new WGA-studio contract. The deal stipulates that as episode counts rise, more writers are required to be staffed, with a minimum of six scribes (including the showrunner) for seasons with 13 or more episodes.

With studios cutting back on their output, making shows with longer seasons is writers’ best bet for keeping as many people employed as possible post-peak TV. The steady, seasonal work of the network era is likely never coming back, but a return to 20-episode seasons could help keep more writers working for longer periods of time.

The benefits of widening shows’ appeal, meanwhile, ought to be obvious. The success-based streaming residual bonus won by the guild requires shows to be viewed by the equivalent of 20 percent of a service’s domestic subscriber base, a tall order for most series to meet. This will likely necessitate a less artisanal approach than many signature shows of the peak TV era took, and a return to the broader sensibilities that defined network television.

Another potential benefit here would be the ability to give shows multiple windows for monetization. A series with wide enough appeal could be run on linear TV, or licensed to a FAST service, opening it up to new viewers and possibly luring them back to the original SVOD platform.

Paramount has already seen success with this strategy, running the streaming “Yellowstone” spinoff “1883” on its linear Paramount Network over the summer. The show became 2023’s most-watched scripted series on cable, averaging nearly 1.8 million live viewers per episode according to Nielsen data, and was the most-watched cable program, period, for the week of July 17.

Not every show can benefit from the halo of “Yellowstone,” but the point is that series pitched at a wide audience have the potential to keep widening their viewership through secondary windows.

All of this does not mean TV needs to sacrifice creativity and intelligent writing. As an anonymous scribe told Vulture this summer, “Everybody is looking for high-quality, broad-audience shows again. If you could bring back the heyday of Brandon Tartikoff-Warren Littlefield NBC with shows like ‘The West Wing,’ ‘ER,’ ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ — maybe with some nudity and F-bombs — every streamer would be very happy right now.” Indeed, this seems to be the ideal strategy for TV in the post-prestige era.

Of course, if it were so easy to simply make good shows that are both popular and acclaimed, everyone would already be doing it. But the roadmap is there, and those that can successfully follow it stand to benefit immensely.