The seasons of the series streaming They are increasingly shorter, and not always by creative decision. Behind the cuts are skyrocketing production costs, subscriber retention strategies and, sometimes, decisions made from the accounting department and not from the writers’ table. The phenomenon is so broad that it also affects altered versions of classic series, eliminating scenes and changing soundtracks without warning.
This episode is not how I remembered. You are reviewing a series that you already know and something goes wrong: a scene that you remembered clearly does not appear. Or the opening credits song sounds different. Or the final episode ends earlier than it should. It is not always a failure of your memory. Often, the version you see in front of you is not the same as the one you saw back in the day. This phenomenon has gained visibility in recent months thanks to users who document on social networks the differences between versions, and its scope is greater than it seems.
The platforms of streaming They offer, in many cases and without realizing it, degraded or cut versions of series and movies. The reasons behind these decisions are multiple.
Sustained contraction. Before entering into the phenomenon of cuts without notice, it is worth remembering some facts. According to the firm Parrot Analyticsthe average number of episodes per season on free-to-air television fell from 16.2 in 2018 to 11.8 in July 2024. On streaming platforms streamingwhich already started from shorter seasons, have also contracted: from 10.7 episodes on average in 2018 to 9.3 in the same period. Some studies talk that production companies and platforms are increasingly stingy when it comes to renewing or ordering series: they simply ask for fewer episodes. One last piece of information about this reduction: in 2025, the number of original series streaming fell by 11% year-on-year.
Beyond those series that suffer, against the will of their creators, cuts in the number of their episodes (as it happened at the time with ‘The House of the Dragon’), there are cuts from series already broadcast. For example, the final episode of ‘Friday Night Lights’, which is now on Filmin (in its shortened version) had a duration of more than 60 minutes. When it moved to NBC for free-to-air broadcast, it was cut to less than 45 minutes to fit with advertising. Complete scenes are missing from this mutilated version. Here we can see a similar case with an episode of ‘The Bill Cosby Hour’ streaming.
Music, another point of friction. The licensing rights for musical themes do not always extend to all platforms or expire after a period of time, which requires replacing original songs with others. When ‘The Wonder Years’ arrived on Netflix in 2011 after years of being blocked by rights issues, numerous songs had been replaced, including Joe Cocker’s iconic version of ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’ that opened each episode. In ‘Dawson Grows’, Paula Cole’s original tune was replaced in streaming by a Jann Arden song; The fan outcry was so intense that Cole ended up re-recording his own song.
It is a common problem, which has meant that legendary series like ‘Luz de Luna’ or ‘Búscate la vida’ have spent years without being able to be seen, not even in domestic formats (in the case of Chris Peterson’s legendary series, we are still waiting).
The war of the formats. We’ve already talked about itbut it is not bad to remember that the image format has been manipulated on countless occasions to adapt it to widescreen televisions. The case of ‘The Simpsons’ is perhaps the most popularsince many jokes with the original square format of the first seasons were lost. Also The case of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ is popular‘, which in its panoramic format and retouched colors makes the illusion of night scenes from the original series disappear and allows the filming crew and sets to be seen. A disaster that can only be solved by going to the first editions on DVD before their “remastering”.
What to do to solve it. One more time: do not completely rule out the physical format. Until now we were certain (video game fans have been suffering from this for years) that fluctuations in catalogs, even of material that you have purchased and that is theoretically yours, can play tricks on you. We are now convinced that the fact that a film is in a catalog today streaming It does not assure us that it will be within a year: reasons as spurious as saving fees or storage space for platform owners can lead to the elimination of thousands of movies and series.
The only way to preserve a movie or series without anyone modifying it, to make sure that no one is going to cut it because they think you are not prepared to pay enough attention to it, is to have your own copy. In physical or digital form, but in a safe place. Until recently, keeping our DVDs, our CDs with games, our cartridges and our vinyl, our records with backup copies was something for nostalgic and paranoid people. Now it is a matter of preserving what the platforms continue to mutilate.
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