‘South Park’ changing course, will now have ten-episode seasons

There is a major shift coming now for one of the longest-running shows in cable history: no longer will “South Park” be airing 14 episodes a year separated into blocks of seven; and instead, the show’s creators in Trey Parker and Matt Stone are going to be going with a more traditional format in airing ten episodes once a week consecutively in the fall. This is basically the same format that “Girls” or “Game of Thrones” uses over on HBO, and it works rather well; however, this also means that fans will have four fewer episodes to look forward to a year.

So why the change? Speaking to the New York Times, Stone explains that the two (who also created “The Book of Mormon”) want more time to work on some other projects, and having a shorter episode order will also enable them to be able to make certain that the episodes they do put out are of the highest quality possible:

“Why did we do seven and seven to begin with? We just sort of made that up. And we are switching to 10 for the same reason. It just sounded like a good number, and we won’t break up the year [now] so we can more easily do other stuff.”

For those of you worried that the reduced order moving forward means that “South Park” is near the end, don’t fret; while Parker and Stone clearly have more interests now that they are able to pursue, they have no intentions of stopping the show for many years. (As a matter of fact, the series has already been renewed by the network for additional seasons.)

“South Park’s” recent highlights over the past year include spoofing Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson, and also putting an episode together called “Obama Wins” one day after the Presidential election.

Photo: Comedy Central