We use be able to watch a tv season once a year with some sort of cliff hanger ending compelling us to impatiently wait for the next season. The episodes for each season usually were around fifteen to twenty four episodes per season.
Then the walking dead came out, and at first it followed that criteria, until it became really popular and someone on the marketing side decided to cut a season in half and then give the viewer a two part season for the year.
Soon after that other popular tv series adopted that same method and it has been going downhill from that point. Now we get five episodes per year and have to wait three years for new material? What the hell has happened here?
Game of Thrones is the absolute worst culprit for this type of marketing, and why is that? It all boils down to money, between seasons of the show being on the air, toys are being sold, costumes, books, higher resolution copies of older episodes, and merchandise of all types is being sold while we the viewer wait for the next season of a whopping 5 episodes with more to come three years later.
Its despicable greed that we have to wait for, and it's setting the new standard for television programming. I imagine in the very near future where all our shows are online, or set into a digital interface from your cable company, that we will have to pay for each episode separately, and depending on the show and it's popularity that price will go up.
The viewers are being bled dry financially and soon it's going get worse, I'm tired of being seduced into paying more for a service I already pay for. What's even worse is that they know you have no defense against it. I am one of those suckers that will watch Game of Thrones when it gets released, and if it boiled down to paying five dollars per episode extra, I can't say that I wouldn't do it.
There should be some sort of regulatory system in place that stops these companies from gouging the viewer.
Scott Goerz
