Starting last fall, fans noticed that Nickelodeon began splitting up previously announced season totals into shorter episode counts. It has now seemingly become the new normal across the board. Previously announced season totals that were 20+ episodes long have been artificially split into two seasons.
Why? Presumably so the episodes can get to streaming faster. For the most part, Nick’s shows have had to wait six months after the final episode of a season airs on TV for it to begin streaming. With 20-26 half-hour totals, the wait time between new seasons has been fairly long.
While it makes sense due to that reason, it is still an artificial split that was not intended when the show/season was ordered, and how it was produced.
Take The Thundermans: Undercover for example. 26 half-hours were produced last year in Canada. But after airing the first 13 episodes earlier this year, they are now about to start airing “season two” – aka the next 13 episodes from the same production season.
SpongeBob SquarePants was renewed for a 15th season of 26 episodes back in 2023. However, because of the new splitting, the now-listed 15th season is the second half of the originally produced 14th season. The actual 15th season is now listed as the 16th and 17th seasons.
This change has become evident in their press releases as well. Rock Paper Scissors‘ renewal was announced as two seasons of 10 episodes each. Otherwise known as a single season of 20 episodes, like season one was. PAW Patrol and Rubble & Crew‘s renewals were similarly announced the same way, as 26 total episodes but split between two seasons.
Again, while the split makes sense to get new episodes to streaming faster (as this seems to be the only way Nick can do it, for some reason – likely contractual ones), it gives shows an artificially inflated season count that was not present in Nickelodeon’s programming before now.
This artificial split is nothing new in the streaming world, though. Especially for kids programming and animated series on streamers like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Netflix has long split a single season of 26-episodes into two, three or even four different seasons! A great example has always been Voltron: Legendary Defender. That show has 78 total episodes, which were produced as three seasons of 26-episodes each. However, Netflix lists them as eight (8!) different seasons.
In more recent years, Netflix has tried to correct this by listing multiple batches of episodes as “parts” or “volumes” instead.
Other traditional kids TV channels haven’t had to go this route. Disney Channel’s shows often go over to Disney+ in batches either during or right after a season ends. Cartoon Network’s shows have either streamed the next day after airing on TV, or release in batches.