Does The Challenge Need 90-Minute Episodes?

In 2019, the Challenge underwent a major change. Episodes were beefed up from 60 minutes to 90 minutes, and that’s been the standard for the flagship show for the past seven seasons.

Now that we’ve had 90-minute episodes for over half a decade — along with 60(ish) minute episodes of All Stars — was the move to 90 minutes a good choice?

I wrote about this in the past, but that was before War of the Worlds 2 started airing, so I hadn’t even seen an episode when I published that article. I will say, I was excited for the longer episodes during that season, and MTV did a good job justifying the increased length. War of the Worlds 2 was packed with drama, and there were only 16 episodes in the season. Then, Total Madness followed a similar schedule, and the longer episodes felt exciting (especially because the season aired during the pandemic).

We also started to see some cracks during Total Madness. MTV adopted the skull twist with that season, which quickly became a series of people volunteering to go into eliminations. This minimized the drama of deliberations, and when key elements of the show are reduced, it can make episodes start to drag.

By the time Double Agents rolled around, MTV expanded the seasons to 19 episodes. Not only that, they made decisions to focus more on the competition and less on the drama. Occasionally, this gave us action-packed episodes, but this season also had competitions like Drone Control. When you’re watching a game like that, 90 minutes feels too long.

Most recently, Battle of the Eras had 19 90-minute episodes. At first, this worked well because the season had a huge cast. It gave us a chance to get reacquainted with most people and allowed for multiple story lines in each episode. As the season progressed and the cast dwindled, episodes became more predictable and they started to drag.

It seemed like the consensus of Challenge fans was that Battle of the Eras felt too long. Then, All Stars: Rivals aired on MTV with episodes that were about 60-minutes. To my surprise, there were quite a few Challenge viewers who wanted to return to the 90-minute format.

If that’s true, they’re in luck, because I don’t see the 90-minute episodes going away. The Challenge isn’t as cheap to make as it used to be, so MTV needs the longer episodes to fund the show. Longer seasons with lengthier episodes mean more ads, and therefore, more opportunities to make money.

So, if MTV wants people to continue to tune in, it’s up to them to make the seasons interesting. From a viewers’ perspective, 90-minute episodes aren’t always necessary, especially when the show wants to leave most of its major drama on the cutting room floor. On the other hand, MTV may need these episodes so it can afford to make the show. So, it’s not a matter of if we’ll continue seeing 90-minute episodes, it’s a matter of what MTV will do with them.