I remember when extra-long TV episodes were a selling point.
If “The X-Files” was airing a two-hour “television event,” Fox would lead its promos with the upped runtime.
Finales were given extra gravitas with extended episodes, and sweeps week was filled with mega entries of each network’s highest-rated shows.
“Longer” was meant to equal “better,” even though the motivation for most of these episodes was based in selling more ads around a popular program, rather than the program’s creators begging for more time.Nevertheless, the “longer=better” concept has cemented itself in the minds of not only TV viewers (as those ads intended), but many of today’s TV creators, as well.
Even when ads are a non-factor — like series on premium cable and streaming — there’s an abundance of flagrant offenders.
Shows like Amazon Prime’s “Hunters” (which starts with a 90-minute pilot), HBO’s “The Outsider
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