In case many of you haven't noticed this already, the new NBC comedy series The Good Place has only 13 episodes for its first season and has not received a full-season order of ~22 episodes.

The reason? The creator of The Good Place, Michael Schur, tells TV Line that he always intended it to have a 13-episode first season. He stated that TGP was going to be "really heavily serialized", and is "not a 'you can do as many of these as you want' type of show". "It has to be tightly plotted. And it’s much harder to do that over 22 or 24 episodes, versus 13 or so.”

Plus, TGP's castmembers, including Kristen Bell and Ted Danson, were agreeable to a shortened season.

According to Schur, if The Good Place is renewed for a second season, it is likely to be about 13 episodes as well.

http://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/good-place-season-one-episodes/

The British style of season is becoming more prevalent in the US. Shows like "The Walking Dead" have a season split into sets of 8 episodes. That way they get 2 premieres and 2 finales. It helps keep the show fresh in some cases. I doubt TWD would have lasted this long with 22 episode seasons. Some other series use the same format. With costs ever increasing it will be more difficult to do traditional series. The 3 leads on The Big Bang Theory get $1 million per episode each for usually 22 episodes So $66 million is spent on just 3 actors.

I'm sure Ted Danson and Kristen Bell appreciate the lighter schedule and they can be paid well for less work.

It depends on the series but shorter seasons can work.

You realize that the norm for shows now in a season is typically less than 20 episodes, right? Around 16? Just putting it out there that not all series (in fact, hardly ever) have 22 episodes in a season anymore.

I assumed it got less episodes because it basically sucks.