Trying to mentally parse these long winded recipes = takes longer to read = "greater engagement". These crappy recipes are all about seo and add placement as you'll notice these recipes are loaded with Google ads. So it is a self fulfilling prophecy that the pages where users spend more time and see more ads are ranked highest.
You are undervaluing yourself. You should bill by the hour and round up where appropriate. Bill for time spent thinking, on calls, emails, presenting, testing, QA, go live, etc...
Dev might actually be 20% of your overall billable time.
To me, it means viewers disliked the last season they watched but hung in through to end, in hopes for something good. It didn't deliver, so they didn't bother with the next season.
This is based on my opinion of the above said show.
I started making websites in 1995 when I realize how easy it is to edit HTML code. I then saw a job board posting in high school for a local company that wanted a web designer. Fast forward to college I opted to take Business School because the computer science department was so ancient. I didn't want to spend time learning archaic languages for the sake of 'theory'. Fast forward to today and I've been programming successfully, without any formal training for over 25 years.