Let's not forget that even the 20-episode season greats had their fair share of real stinker episodes, those stinkers increasing in frequency as the series dragged on several seasons longer than it should have due to sheer momentum. And that a huge proportion of 20 episode season television series just sucked and were forgotten about.
We've also moved beyond the three-camera stage plays with very few sets to television shows where one episode is shot on more sets than Friends used for its entire run - because it makes better television. Episodes are also longer than 22 minutes now. (That's what YouTube is for.) These factors demand a lot more effort, which means there's not enough time or labor to pull together 20 episodes in a year.
Call of the void. My understanding is that it's your brain inventing risky scenarios so that you can shrink from them in revulsion, as practice for "don't do that."
My point being that there are great numbers of adults people who still literally believe in the organized religion of their choice. Those people do not "pull back the curtain" for their children when they come of age; they continue to propagate the religion as truth.
There's a big difference. Zero sane adults actually believe in Santa.
The Santa tradition, I think, teaches something very important to kids: that they are the ones who need to figure out what's true and what's not, even when that disagrees with what trusted authority figures say. Religion doesn't do that, since there's never a time when the curtain is pulled back on it.
The other site in the running was adjacent to Fermilab in Batavia, IL. It would have cost much less to build there, because it would have used the existing ring as a pre-accelerator, and the human capital necessary was already in the vicinity. Not only was it going to be more costly to construct in Texas, it would be more costly to maintain as well; I recall something about the insect population in Texas being much more detrimental to the concrete.
This was all being planned and organized in the 1980s, and I think Bush being Vice President (and then President through 92) may have had something to do with it going to Texas.