In basketball parlance, the term "tweener" has been used to describe a player who didn't quite fit into one of the five established on-court positions, somebody too small to thrive close to the basket, but maybe not quite fast or dexterous enough to handle the ball and spread the offense.
Formerly a pejorative, in today's NBA, where a higher premium is put on versatility, a tweener has value. Today's streaming TV landscape has given value to nonfiction tweeners.
Productions that a decade ago would have been told either "Trim down to 100 minutes" or "Get more footage to become eight or 10 episodes" can now find homes at three or four or five episodes — regardless of whether "contract or expand" would still have been good advice.
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