I know the writer/actor strikes and covid are significant factors but tv shows releasing their seasons several years apart is starting to become a common occurrence do you find that concerning?
So, if we're being honest and looking at the bigger picture, the fact of these longer waits between season has been going on since before the strikes, especially. In fact, I believe that that's one factor that helped lead up to the strikes in the first place.
To answer your question, I don't think there's a writer, artist, actor, crewmember, etc. who's NOT concerned about these large gaps between seasons. This leads to major disruption both within shows and within the industry at large. When shows go on these long hiatuses, everyone involved needs to fill that time between projects with other work. But, if all of these projects are on hiatus, what work is there to be had? And if people happen to actually find work, the schedules often overlap, and people are maybe stuck in contracts on new shows that prevent them from returning to their old shows, so that leads to a lack of continuity between seasons -- if a show suddenly feels different or looks different, especially today, that's likely what happened.
On an industry-wide scale, when all of this work is so hard to get, when there are so few opportunities, then the people who make the shows tend to feel like they don't have any ability to bargain, and are forced to take lower rates than they otherwise would just to put money in their pockets.
Also, when it comes to audiences, you guys then never know when something is going to come back, or if it's going to come back. And channels/streamers already don't announce when something is canceled themselves, they've historically relied on the trades to do it for them, so already there was a lack of communication. But now there's a lack of PATTERN -- there used to be seasons of series that followed a pattern of release: Usually series on networks started around September/October, took a couple of months off in December-February, came back March-May, hiatus again through the summer. That doesn't exist for these streamer shows. They come and go whenever the fuck, and a lot are binge-dropped, so it's not like they're kept fresh in audiences brains past maybe a month or so. The audience is then totally left in the dark -- OR, it drives the layman to go to the trades even more, and now laymans folks think they're experts in an industry that really has no rhyme or reason, and now people suddenly care about runtimes of movies as opposed to the actually quality of the films themselves and--
Whatever. It's all fucked, and it was fucked up by these tech companies that promised disruption, but never promised how they would develop a new consistency to keep both filmmakers and audiences appeased. They just wanted to come in and make the most money while fronting the smallest costs.
God, I could talk about this all day. It pisses me off.
