You remember when television seasons lasted more than 10 episodes? The viewers who have made up Suits’ 3.7 billion streaming minutes between Netflix and Peacock sure as heck do. The hit series — which premiered on the USA Network back in 2011, where it ran for nine seasons — has found itself back in the cultural conversation after making the shift from Prime Video to the two aforementioned streamers, where it seems to have taken over the world. Everywhere you turn, new fans are discovering the series and old ones are giving it a rewatch.
Suits has broken Nielsen streaming records two weeks in a row with over 3 billion minutes watched, leaving analysts wondering why and the creatives behind the show asking where their money is. But there’s a fairly simple answer to at least the first question: Essentially, longer series with more seasons don’t necessarily make for better shows, but storytellers' ability to lean into the longform has been severely cut into by the streaming model. And, if Suits is any indication, there’s still a clear audience demand for longer shows!
Having nine seasons doesn't replace the need to have strong individual seasons, but it does give the audience more opportunity to connect with a show’s characters and explore the worlds and stories that they're engaged with.
Algorithms and Residuals
Much of the “why” behind Suits’ surge in viewership can be laid at the feet of Netflx’s recommendation algorithm, as its heavy reliance on its own Top 10 can make the success of a title a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course, there’s also an element of good ol’ lightning in a bottle at play there, and certainly audience interest in the type of show Suits is – again, nine seasons and developed character arcs to get invested in – combines with an algorithm that surely loves to see the series play out over days/weeks/months, spurring it on to keep serving it up to even more eyeballs as an option.
As for the creatives who are looking for their money? This situation is yet another illustration of why the streaming model needs to change, and why, when it does, the viewers will benefit from stronger stories.
Sisters Nora and Lilla Zuckerman — producers and writers on two of Suits’ 16-episode seasons — spoke to Decider about the money they received from the show’s recent astronomical streaming success. For a network re-air of their episode, they’d receive somewhere around $12K back in 2016. For the billions and billions of minutes watched on streaming? $414.26.
Why does that matter in the context of creating engaging shows that folks want to return to season after season? Because in a time when the sentiment that “writing just isn’t as good as it used to be anymore” runs rampant, the biggest common denominators are how little writers are being paid, how few of them are able to be involved in the creative process through post-production, and how they’re not being given the time to create the rich, long-form stories that made up so much of the early aughts.
Ethan Drogin, another Suits writer and producer, would share similar sentiments in an LA Times op-ed — his check was all of $259.71, by the way — closing out with a line of questioning that I find particularly interesting.
“What is the real value of the limited series that streamers have been cranking out?” Drogin asks. “Are viewers as likely to revisit short-lived, ripped-from-the-headlines one-offs about corporate scandals or small-town murders as they are a fully developed, long-running drama?”
Now, I don’t necessarily believe that the sentiment that “writing just isn’t as good as it used to be anymore” is universal. I do, however, think there’s merit in exploring the idea in conjunction with Drogin’s commentary on season lengths and the hurdles that writers currently face. With writers’ rooms a fraction of the size that they used to be and productions scaling back on keeping writers rooms involved throughout the entirety of the season, writers face more challenges than ever when it comes to developing and nurturing quality stories.
A Bygone Age of Television
The 2000s ushered in the second Golden Age of television. Everywhere you turned there were incredible, rich stories that spanned years of viewers’ lives. The Sopranos, Lost, The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones, Suits… phew. Two decades filled with an embarrassment of riches! Now, the algorithms and the purse strings tell us that three seasons is one too many in most cases. And if you don’t watch that show you’re interested in the first 28 days? Well, you can probably kiss it goodbye. Good luck finding time for it amidst the 500 other options being offered to you at any given time!
Those 500 other options exist for a reason, too (at least so far as Netflix and other major streaming platforms are concerned). It’s easier to bring in new subscribers with a shiny new show than it is with the debut of Season 3 for a series they already didn’t care about. But, now that the streaming bubble has burst and retention and revenue have become more important than the dream of unlimited subscriber growth, it’s possible we could see streamers start to pull away from this tactic. (And hey, 3.7 billion streaming minutes on an old USA Network show is nothing to sniff at.)
Don’t take that to mean streaming hasn’t delivered incredible hits. House of Cards has its baggage now, but it’s still part of that Golden Age conversation. But the series was also the exception to the rule when it came to the number of seasons it had, and the very same can be said for Orange Is the New Black. Each series had time to develop and let us learn and grow with their characters with 6 and 7 seasons respectively. Serialized television was never meant to be a “six-hour movie.” (Yes, the same still goes for limited series.) It’s meant to be longform storytelling that lets you experience the narrative as it grows.
And yes, mediums should evolve with the times. But even in the era of TikTok-driven hits like Wednesday — a show that was fun but most certainly not good enough to warrant the viewership it gained due to social media virality — it’s becoming more and more clear that audiences miss engaging with characters in the way that television used to make possible with longer seasons or series runs as a whole.
What if, instead of chasing virality, we got back to focusing on what made shows good? I’m as much of a fan of popcorn silliness and cotton candy shows like Nailed It as the next gal, and I don’t want those shows to disappear! But I do think it’s time that we got back to paying attention to quality over quantity again.
Television — streaming or otherwise — is clearly at a breaking point. The chase of endless subscriber growth has shifted and viewers are calling out for a return to quality more than ever. So, how do we get back to that? The first answer is that we give these writers what they want. We talk about the money of it all a lot, but many of their demands — like killing off mini rooms and ensuring writers are compensated and involved all the way through post-production — are directly tied to the quality of a series.
Suits has become a recent phenomenon because viewers are voting with their viewership. They’re making the kinds of stories they want clear by the amount of time they’re spending on it (and it’s a lot of freaking time). Viewers continue to rewatch old hits, whether they be sitcom comfort series or serialized greats like The X-Files, not just because of familiarity but because it’s becoming harder and harder to find shows that are given the time to explore long story arcs and character relationships nowadays.
Whether Suits is your cup of tea or not, it's helped to illustrate that what audiences want — and what streamers are making — aren't always one and the same. If Netflix learns the right lesson from this, maybe the second Golden Age doesn’t have to be over just yet.
