Why do streaming services like Netflix create their "TV" shows like TV shows when they are not TV shows?

Why do streaming services like Netflix create their "TV" shows like TV shows when they are not TV shows?

Like why do they make X amount of episodes at 1 hour each with an opening and end credits?

Those were limitations of Television forced by the practical realities of broadcasting and advertising that streaming services like Netflix are not effected by, same thing applies to movies produced by Netflix too, movies run at 2 hours because of the limitations of theaters and the costs involved in running them something Netflix isn't effected by either.

Because nobody's fucking creative anymore.

TV and movies are fucking stupid. They're all the same goddamn shit we've all seen a billion times.

So maybe one day they could get syndication bucks from regular television?

To keep with the general format, probably. They're not so much "limitations" as they are "standards" in the film and television industry. Having your TV shows run at the same length of other TV shows takes the confusion out of scheduling or planning a movie/TV night. If you run your TV show at, say, 2 hours an episode, you're essentially forcing your audience to go out of their way to make time to watch it. Most working people only have one or two hours of free time on a typical weekday (free time to sit down and do absolutely nothing, not the "free time" of shopping, cooking, cleaning, socializing, etc.). Now if they want to watch at least one full episode, they'll have to wait until a weekend or sacrifice other time so they can sit in front of their TV. Suppose you make your movie at 4 or 5 hours long. You're doing the same thing of making people go out of their way to invest time into your movie. For most people, the only time they'll be interested in sitting in front of the TV for 4-6 hours is to watch sports (and even then, at least they get to socialize for 75% of the time as most of it is commercials and rewinds).

TL;DR From a business perspective, not making your TV shows and movies blend in with the rest is a terrible idea.

The time range is as much a part of the medium as anything else. Yes, they're artificial, but we also divide up literature by length, and that has only grown less restrictive. But even when printing was fast and cheap, we had poetry; it was just easier to compile into collections.

Short films have always been a thing. Long films have always been a thing. For the format, there's only so much story you can tell in two hours, but there's also only so many stories that can go beyond that.

You end up with these shows that carry the same story for several seasons. In the past, these would only have been viable as films, but now they can take the time to develop all of the characters. Does this work for every show? No. Some writers totally drop the ball. Sometimes restrictions actually force creators to be, well, creative. The last season of Arrested Development was terrible, and the whimsical editing decisions were a big factor. Some episodes were 20 minutes long, others 35. When does content need to be cut? When you have a hard time limit, you're forced to decide what stays and what goes, and it will come down to quality. If it's that important, you can fight for a minor extension.

I love my long movies. I know some people don't have a taste for them, but I do. The fact is, movies started off short. An hour and a half is artificially long for a film. So why couldn't I ask the same question in reverse? Why are films ever more than 15 minutes? Why film more than a single reel?

The answer is obvious: because sometimes your idea can't be contained in that. I think 2-hours is a nice plateu. A good filmmaker can cover a lifetime in that timespan, and a bad one will barely get the story started. If a good filmmaker needs more time, they'll find a way to get it. Does it really matter what the bad one does?

With the way Netflix works TV shows don't need to be any different from movies, both can now be divided into chapters like a book and be as long as the creator wants instead of the standard 1 hour TV timeslot or 2 hour cinema screening. Stranger Things season one or whatever may as well just be one long movie divided into chapters dictated by story flow instead of artificial 1 hour episode divisions.

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i think its becasue thats how people prefer consumption of media. some people like to binge watch entire seasons, others like to watch one at a time

what i think is retarded is when hulu netflix or amazon has an "original series" and releases it on a television tyope schedule… just do the whole fucking thing at once and let people choose how to watch

Is the difference between TV and movies always going to exist?

probably in the same way there's a difference between a short story, a novella, and a novel. and a series of novels where the author doesn't actually intend to finish the last two books, but complains about other writers on his livejournal dot com in (CURRENT YEAR).

We're in a transition phase.

this
just give it another 5-10 years

You're proposing 10+ hour movies?

Wrong. Those times were made based on people's attention spans. Nobody wants to sit for three hours straight. That's why there used to be intermissions. Two hour movies, hour long television episodes and 30 minute sitcoms are fine the way they are.

People are retarded and won't do anything unorthodox. Same thing with anime and video games. In mediums where literally anything can be created in infinite possibilities, we use the same tropes time after time. It's all orcs and elves, humanoid aliens and space ships, shallow mythology, same basic genres, same basic controls. Red hair vs blue hair. We've been calling anime characters sluts since 1995 and having the same exact threads on imageboards since the creation of 4chan, day after day. No one actually creates anything original. Humans are limited. I think creating ideas that don't already exist must literally be an impossibility.

Meanwhile on Netflix

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Because they still plan to sell them to TV in markets where streaming still hasn't taken off.

cuck did he meem by this?>

No there just isn't an effective way of creating a meritocracy within a realm like entertainment. Hack frauds are given the controls too often and just run things further into the dirt. Quality control is far too difficult as it's too hard to measure results when it comes to something so subjective as personal taste. Also people like generic shit.

The thing I hate most about netflix is how they measure your personal taste. Just because I liked one fucking horror movie doesn't mean I love them all now stop suggesting me a bunch of garbage.

Their exclusive shows are what they use as a draw to get people into streaming though.

Generally I want to finish something in one sitting. I don't want to watch a TV show where each episode is four hours long so I have to watch them in segments.

The same reason films are 24 fps. It's something people are used to that there really isn't that much of an incentive to change

People generally want to watch a serialized tv show that has episodes at one hour. One hour is a nice round number that usually gives enough time for an episode and even if it doesn't there's always the opportunity for a two parter.

In terms of openings and end credits that's probably always going to be a thing. Openings because people expect it and end credits because of union requirements.

Now could this all change? Probably. But unless there's an actual incentive to do so it's unlikely they're going to rock the boat unless some company wants to make a 10 hour mini series and that suddenly takes off.

Also bare in mind that while streaming is killing television, television is still a huge thing and will continue to be for a while. And I'd imagine in poorer countries there's a lot of money to be made with releasing a series there over television rather than streaming. It's a have your cake and eat it too mentality.

Almost all art is a business first and foremost. Original art does come out and usually nobody hears about it or cares when it comes out. There's a reason why Hollywood just wants to do remakes and sequels. It's proven that people will come to theaters to watch them compared to some shit nobody's ever heard about that cost the same amount to produce.

There do exist long films. 10 is too much. Satantango is 7 and 1/2 hours long and is a fantastic film.

Sure, but the majority of people don't want to spend seven solid hours watching a movie. It makes sense for these kinds of things to be structured in such a way that the viewer doesn't fuck up the pacing for themselves by pausing for an hour, or a week, right in the middle of a scene. There's a reason books are separated into chapters.

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Humans are creatures of habit. The episodes being ~1 hour is what people are used to.

Dumping the a whole season as one long 8-hour feature would confuse people. They might feel daunted by the length and the lack of a predetermined stopping point aside from the ending. So the season is broken into separate episodes.

The episodes could be as short or as long as wanted. But again, ~ an hour is what people are used to. Other lengths might confuse them. Or so the executives think.

Plus there's always the possibility of selling syndication rights in the future.

And many people don't have access to Netflix in certain parts of the world and still depend on TV

Because it's easier for telling stories which people can enjoy one at a time.

Like 30 minute episodes normally have just a few acts, the initial build up, the conflict, and the resolution. When they try involving too many different acts it can mean needing to change the setting so many times that it makes the story just feel all over the place.

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So that they can syndicate them and get some of that jew money back from networks.

A better question is why Bojack Horseman is classified in the media and on Wikipedia as a TV show while Homestar Runner is classified everywhere as a webshow.