Monte Cristo is also a very linear story (and for all its episodes, a very simple one), with the secondary characters existing only to serve its plot. It's not all about the number of pages... A lot of Dumas's novels adapt really well to the screen (though most productions of them have sucked, especially of the Three Musketeers) because they're serials, written to be read one episode a week. Most chapters are either a story unto themselves, or built to a cliffhanger. They're structured that way, they're the ancestors of radio and later TV serials! It's very easy to cut or merge minor characters in Dumas. They rarely have a storyarc of their own, and appear only to fulfill a plot related role. You just have to fill the plot role differently and you can cut or merge any.

WOT is inspired by those serials, but Jordan has multiplied everything. WOT is far more complex than any Dumas novel. It branches out into subplots at every turn, and those subplots very often come back to play a role in the main storyline later on.

Of course, if you give someone 8 x 22 episodes it would be possible to write a very decent adaptation for TV. But that's the easiest part, to write the script. It's unrealistic for a whole lot of other reasons. One is because of the size of the cast - just securing so many people for the recurring small but key parts (Verin, Siuan, Sheriam, Elaida, Cadsuane, the Forsaken, Taim, Berelain and so on and so on - the list of those you don't want to cut but that appear only episodically, a few episodes per season, is enormous). It would cost a fortune, and managing the schedules of all these guest stars (who forcibly work on other productions...) would be nightmarish - enough so to discourage networks to produce a show like this. TV shows tend to keep to a minimum the recurring guest stars that they must have available for specific episodes for good reasons. Guest stars aren't kept under contract, you can't be sure they'll be available to film when you need them to film. You can manage a few, which a lot of shows do, but in WOT most of the minor parts are recurring. The only way you can secure secondary actors so they stay available for your show is by paying them a lot, and that's just not done.

The other reason why the option of a regular TV show is unrealistic is that no major network will commit to a "niche" show like this for prime time and with prime time budget, and the networks that could (eg: SyFy in the US) wouldn't have anywhere near the budget for a complex production of this type. While artistically adapting WOT would be possible, realistically it's not possible unless you put on rosy glasses and invent yourself an universe where WOT will suddenly have the wide mass appeal of Desperate Housewives or Lost, or where specialized networks will suddenly commit the kind of budgets the leading series of the networks have.

Another major road bump to adapt something like WOT for TV is that down the line it becomes four different series. It would be terribly difficult, logistically and otherwise, for any show to run in parralel four (Perrin's, Mat's, Egwene's, Rand's - and later Elayne's) story lines. There's just not enough time in an episode for that - you can have an A story and a B story at most (or you run into the same sort of problems that happened with Heroes) If you start alternating between 2 storylines a week and the two others the next, you'd frustrate the audience. If you think Jordan had problems with this, it would be nothing compared to what would happen if this happened on a TV show.