When you come home for the day and settle in for the night, you have to find some way to entertain yourself. Many times, that means plopping down in front of the television to watch your favorite programs and be swept away by the story.

That might seem like an odd thing for an author like me to say, but oftentimes, sitting down to watch television serves as a regular ritual to catch up with my favorite characters. I don’t watch a lot, due to the amount of time I spend writing, but I have certain programs that I try not to miss.

On Tuesdays, it’s NCIS—at least the original one. While I kept tabs on the spinoffs for Los Angeles and New Orleans, I really haven’t become hooked on the Hawaii, Sydney and Origins iterations. One thing I’m glad about is that NCIS has returned to Tuesdays. Mondays were not always the easiest night for me to see the show, while Tuesdays tend to be more fitting for NCIS, which is where the show started over 20 years ago.

Thursday’s my other must-watch television night. That’s where I watch another long-running show, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. I was a regular watcher for the original Law and Order, but that waned after it went off the air, and I haven’t really been fascinated with the return of the show. SVU has been constant, and still finds new ways to show how we, as a society, can royally mess things up.

Before SVU comes on, though, I like to have some light-hearted comedy, which is why I switch the channel at 7 p.m. to watch Georgie and Mandy’s First Marriage. I loved the Big Bang Theory, but wasn’t as hooked on Young Sheldon. However, seeing the return to a comedy with a laugh track made me want to get back on the bandwagon, and I’m glad I did.

When I’m not watching new shows, I’m often pulling out the DVDs to watch some of my favorites from childhood to early adulthood. It’s good to rewatch some of the stories, and I’ve come to realize that the shows on today aren’t putting in as much work on each season—at least when it comes to the number of episodes.

I look at the Star Trek series from the 1980s and 1990s, and most of the seasons are 26 one-hour episodes. That’s a good long time to evolve the story and keep fans entertained.

Some cartoons back in those days went even longer, at least in their first seasons. Having 65 episodes for five days a week over 13 weeks was a surefire way to keep kids like me glued to the television.

Some of the other television series, mostly the non-cartoon variety, I have didn’t produce as many episodes. Most of their seasons were 22, 23, possibly 24 episodes at times. Still a decent amount of episodes, but they were a sign that television was not as “addictive” because there are fewer opportunities to capture audiences’ attention.

Now look at today. Most of the shows who have full seasons top out at 20 episodes at best. What’s worse is that there are more breaks in the full season. You would expect three to five weeks of reruns 40 years ago, but now you have two or three months where you don’t get to see your shows between the first half of the season and the second, and those times are filled with other shows the networks try out.

It gets worse with the shows produced on streaming services. At best, program fans get 10 episodes in a season, and with the ability to binge-watch a full season within a day or two, fans are tortured with waiting a year—or even more in some cases—it’s like the shows of today aren’t even trying.

This might explain why I only have a few select programs that I watch today, and other times where I turn to the classics (Wow, that makes me seem old).

Maybe it’s the desire to provide as many options for entertainment as possible. Maybe it’s to accommodate actors who perform both film and television roles. All I know is that the world of entertainment has gone from the gold standard to some funky soup. In a way, it helps me focus on my writing. Still, I long for the good old days when I could sit in front of the television and have a reasonable expectation of what I’d be watching.