Fox’s entertainment chairman, Kevin Reilly, has only ordered 15 episodes for The Mindy Project season 3 this fall. That might not be such a good idea.

As per Reilly’s belief that “for a contemporary audience, less is more,” instead of gaining a stronger fanbase, taking away seven episodes might not allow the show to grow creatively and attract new viewers.

Many speculate about whether or not shorter seasons would really allow a show such as The Mindy Project to build and grow. It’s not like a cable drama where they can spare the few extra seconds of a drawn out pause (looking at you, Mad Men) every other scene. On a network television show – comedy or drama – every second counts. They have 22 minutes to juggle two to, at most, four plot lines and still have a satisfying set up, plot and resolution to them all. If anything, the show could benefit from longer episodes, and then you can consider shortening the seasons.

On the flip side to that, you have the BBC’s Sherlock, which debuted in 2010. Four years later, fans have nine 90-minute episodes that have the production value more akin to a short movie than a television program. A show like that could not successfully run on a network station in America, unless it was dubbed a mini-series ‘event.’ Never mind the fact the episodes run without commercial breaks – an impossible feat in the United States, save for premium channels such as HBO.

But then you have Elementary, CBS’s response to the BBC’s Sherlock, that everyone fretted about when it was picked up. People wondered how the network dared to bring Sherlock Holmes to New York City and reimagine John Watson as Joan Watson. Two seasons and 48 episodes later, I can honestly say it is one of the most well-written and compelling shows on network television.

Lucy Liu’s Joan Watson is an incredibly strong character – regardless of gender or race – and plays off Jonny Lee Miller’s Sherlock’s snark and wit beautifully. She has been known to be the stronger of the two, as she helps Sherlock through the darkness of his drug addiction recovery and its subsequent effects. Over the 48 episodes, the show has taken us through Joan’s evolution from being Sherlock’s sober companion to his partner, while still allowing us to learn about her back story and life prior to the pilot as a well-known surgeon.

The nuances of the characters become less defined with shortened seasons. While a show could reach 100 episodes, it could take them anywhere from five to eight seasons. In today’s world, for syndication and ad sales and all the logistics behind the scenes, five long seasons of one show is a lot more desirable than eight short seasons, even if it means producing more episodes in a year.

Within 22 episodes, you’re going to have a few weak spots, but the proven fact remains that there are dozens of shows that can sustain the top-notch storytelling over long periods of time. Examples that immediately come to mind are dramas such as Elementary, but also the CBS law drama, The Good Wife and ABC’s fairy tale Once Upon a Time. If you were to shorten the season order to 13 episodes, that storytelling would probably be more condensed and rushed, not giving the characters proper time to develop.

Back to the point: The Mindy Project isn’t a drama. It’s a half hour comedy, pieced together by bits of romantic-comedy, occasional physical comedy, and amazing pop culture references, all the while being narrated by Mindy Lahiri. The trials and tribulations of Mindy’s life and the people she fills it with don’t demand 42 minutes of material and a shortened season order. This is the show you can pick an episode at random to watch and know you’ll be delightfully entertained for the majority of it. For them, doing 22 episodes allows the characters to slowly evolve without the fear of whiplash character development, while still doing shorter plot arcs from episode to episode.

What it really boils down to is reliability – and lack thereof in recent years. Back before the days of cable channels catering to nearly every niche market, and way before companies like Netflix and Amazon entered the fray of original programming production, television shows used to be reliable. You were able to turn to NBC or ABC or Fox at a certain time and 22 out of the 52 weeks in a year, you’d know what to expect. Now, with mid-season replacements and show hiatus’ that span months instead of weeks, people struggle to simply find the shows they want to watch live.

It doesn’t help that networks are increasingly impatient when it comes to ratings for new shows. If viewers don’t tune in the first few weeks, it is not uncommon for a show to be pulled from the schedule, either canceled altogether or leaving what few viewers it had with the promise to air (“burn off”) the remaining episodes at a later date (or the show is simply placed on a doomed time slot, such as Friday nights against the ratings juggernaut, Shark Tank. You will be missed, Enlisted.)

Since the dawn of television, shows have been strategically placed on the schedule and fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, creating comedy blocks and Must See TV. This allows for each show to build on each other. Realistically, when The Mindy Project debuted in fall 2012, behind the still-ratings-hot New Girl, the majority of its overlapping target audience would leave their televisions on Fox.

It has to do with lead-ins and whether or not a show faces direct competition, but when Fox abruptly pulled The Mindy Project in the middle of its second season this past winter, they risked losing what little audience they had. Thankfully, due to the genius of Mindy Kaling, her writing team and the entire show’s cast and crew, there was enough buzz and build up for the second season to end on a high note.

Fox’s ratings this seasons have been, admittedly, dismal. Despite their block of comedies, consisting of New Girl, The Mindy Project and Brooklyn 99, which won the Golden Globe for best television comedy in its freshman season, people simply didn’t tune in on Tuesday nights this past season. Reality shows such as The Voice have come to dominate and the niche storytelling didn’t reach as many viewers as it could or should have. Jessica Day, Mindy Lahiri and Jake Peralta have sadly suffered because of it. Next fall, New Girl, which received a 22-episode order, and The Mindy Project will team up once again to take on the 9 p.m. – 10 p.m. block on Tuesday nights, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine has been sandwiched into Fox’s storied Animation Domination Sunday night block of television at 8:30 p.m.

On the other hand (the cable hand), USA Network has taken to ordering 13-episode seasons for most of their shows – regardless of genre. They typically chop those orders in half even further, airing about 10 episodes during the summer/fall, and the rest in the late winter/early springtime period. It’s a tried and true method for them and they have been rated the number one cable channel for years.

Then you get into the murky debate that cable ratings don’t hold a candle to what the networks need to provide sustainable content, but at this point, if a network show can simply match their ratings from the previous year, it’s considered a win. USA Network’s first two original comedies, Sirens and Playing House, debuted at unconventional times this year – in March and April respectively, with the network’s summer shows premiering in June.

With the rise in binge-viewing, and as alternative mediums like Netflix and Hulu release seasons in bulk, we may very well be having a null conversation. The damage is done. A storm is coming to the way network television is produced and aired and we’re right in the eye of it. If Kevin Reilly has his way, the uniformity and reliability of a 22-to-24 episode season will be on its way out. Especially as more shows become mid-season replacements, and therefore only air 13 episodes per television season.