Agreeing with AllenF:
That's what made "24" so great, you knew that you had the next 18-22 weeks (give or take 2 hour episodes) to look forward to, no matter when you watched it.
I first REALLY spotted this trend with The Sapranos and it has been down hill ever since. It use to be the only short season shows were fillers trying to find if they could get enough viewers to warrant carrying over into a full run.
The Sapranos went 8 shows and took a FULL YEAR OFF one season, WTH is that? And I'll give Showtime credit, they ran some long seasons with there hit shows, but are now falling in the grove too.
Nope, I'll wait until the season is over and watch all the seasons episodes in one or two days of marathoning it. There is plenty to watch and I have to admit, some of those mindless reality shows I'm hooked on: mostly the Food Network and Discovery Channel ones, but I'm a sucker for Big Brother - I but the 24/7 feed every year.
Everything else, we stream or download. We don't and likely won't ever have a DVR, hostly, everything we watch is available somewhere - Comcast's on demand really fills in the blanks if Fancast don't.