Why in the 1960s shows lasted 30 plus episodes now 22-24?

I noticed via buying DVDs that many shows in the 1960s like Rat Patrol
(not bad), Gilligans Island etc ran for over 30 episodes in a season.

Steven L....

Those were easy shows to produce.

Star Trek (Original Series) was more complex, with its complex sets and
special effects (fell behind schedule a couple of times). And so it
only had an average of 26 episodes per season. Other complex shows like
Mission Impossible also had fewer than 30 episodes per season.

The truth is, all other things being equal, today's shows have more
complex logistics. A sitcom like I Love Lucy took place mostly on one
set, with a standard cast of four main characters. A show like "Lost"
has on-location filming in every episode, special effects, complex sets,
and a large ensemble cast. Damon Lindelof has said it's physically
impossible to do more than about 24 episodes per season (without
requiring actors to work through the summer)--and I believe him. As it
is, last season Lost fell so far behind schedule that the last three
episodes were filmed in parallel, with actors running back and forth
between the sets of the three episodes to say their lines.

Even today, if the show is still cheap and easy to produce (like a soap
opera or telenovela), you can still have more than 30 episodes per
season even today. MyNetwork has gone the telenovela route for the 8 PM
and 9 PM time slots. Each telenovela is a "stripped" show, 5 episodes
per week for 13 weeks. After which there will be another telenovela,
and after that, another one, and so on, perhaps right through the
summer. Multiply it: This season there will be 260 episodes in each
time slot!

How can MyNetwork be capable of producing over TWO HUNDRED episodes in
the 8 PM time slot??? Watch the show and you'll see. The director
saves time by not filming more than one take per scene, even if the
actors flub a line here or there. They save money with very simple sets
and use of stock footage to set the locale. They don't go on location
much. Essentially, they're doing these telenovelas the way Edward D.
Wood Jr. used to do movies.

Now if the big thing for shows is to make lots of money in syndication
why then do networks not have 30 episode seasons like before? This way
they could have about 96 episodes in 3 seasons instead of being in
season 5 to reach 100.

It seems that networks would be making money with syndication faster
this way then having just 22-24 episodes per season.

Although as viewers I suspect shows like DH and Lost would just have
more dragged out storylines ie instead of 24 episodes to tell a
storyline they would just drag out the storyline to be 30 plus episodes.

On the other hand their would be less reruns and less garbage shows ie
reality shows if seasons ran to 30+ episodes.

Even if you did 30 episodes per season forr sitcoms and 22-24 for 1 hour
shows networks could churn out sitcoms faster to syndication.

Or is creating 30 plus episodes per season more oostly overall then
waiting 5 seasons to have 100 episodes for a syndication run?

Rob Jensen...

Yes. And not just in monetary terms.

Back in the 1960's and as SOP up until Moonlighting in the mid-80's,
most one-hour shows were filmed on the same one-episode-per-week
schedule that sitcoms are filmed on. As one-hour shows grew more
movie-like in process and quality, their production schedules grew
longer and longer, but not without a lot of turmoil -- the countless
delays with not just Moonlighting (where Glenn Gordon Caron's
inability to get scripts out of the writers' rooms contributed at
least as much if not more stress to the show than Bruce & Cybill's
running conflict) and China Beach being probably the most extreme
examples. The burnout factor on one-hour shows was *high* starting in
this late-80's era.

By the time of The X-Files, where Chris Carter refused to produce
episodes in anything less than an 8-day-to-10-day schedule, the
studios had given up on their pipe dream of getting the one-hour shows
back down to a one-per-week production schedule and virtually all
one-hour shows work on a roughly 8-day filming schedule. Some series,
such as IIRC, the Stargates, film a given episode in seven working
days and The Sopranos has the luxury of filming at a reported pace of
three weeks per episode, which I think is just ridonkulously leisurely
to the point of self-indulgence. (OTOH, The Sopranos does a *lot* of
exteriors, so maybe I'm being a little hard on it.)

Also, even most of the short-order shows (13-16 episode seasons like
Nip/Tuck and The 4400) pretty much film on the same 8-to-10-day per
episode pace that's the standard schedule of the one-hour form. In
those cases, the short orders are clearly due primarily to cost and
they choose to spend the money on fewer episodes rather than decrease
the quality of the show by spreading the same limited money into more
episodes.

-- Rob