While I'm sure the question would be understood either way, I think the problem arises because the question is not really a complete thought. How many is/were what? "Is" or "was" here is acting as a helping verb, and there is no primary verb.
If you asked, "How many episodes were made?" it should clearly be in the past tense, because the making of the episodes is complete. If the program was till in production, you could ask "How many episodes are being made?" or "How many episodes will be made?"
If you asked, "How many episodes are in existence?" or "How many episodes are available for viewing?" or some variation on that thought, then it should be present tense, because the episodes exist in the present.
That's not to say that the question as worded is "wrong". The context of the conversation might well have supplied the primary verb. "They made these episodes in 2007 and 2008." "How many episodes was that?" We'd understand the question to mean "How many were made?", so it should be past tense. But, "I have all the episodes of this program on DVD." "How many episodes is that?" Now the question means "How many episodes do you have on DVD?", which is present tense.
There are several questions packed in here:
1) How much notice would a moment have? There is some reason that the phrase evolved to "moment's notice" rather than "a moment OF notice", but I was unable to find the history of the phrase to further clarify. Looking at it practically, I would not think that a moment would have very much notice. Further, since being poetic is giving words life beyond their obvious meaning, this is definitely poetic.
2) How did something poetic become common usage? Given that the use of the phrase seems to really catch on after 1791, I would assume that something that was popular used the phrase. Some gentle searching of famous works at that time (particularly poetry) did not reveal use of the phrase, so at this point anything I say would just be speculation.
3)a) (implied question) Is the possessive correct? It is but not for the reason you think. My research suggests that 24 hours' notice is incorrect, but moment's notice is correct. As you can see in the graph, "24 hours notice" is the older phrase and given that they both persist (despite hours' being currently and generally more popular), I usually go with the oldest being the winner. Further, the interpretation that "24 hours" is a measure of the notice seems reasonable. This also, I think, proves that this question is not a duplicate given that the phrases are different. The difference between the two classes of phrase is clear given the usage pattern moment's notice versus moments notice. Finally, it's clear that possessives are extremely complicated, so I would think that explains the lack of definitive discussion.
4) (Implied question) What about the beginning of the phrase? If you accept the usage data, the correct phrase is "at a moment's notice", at least according to the ngram viewer. I don't have a great answer for why though.
5) (Implied question) Is the moment personified? Yes. Unless you only use a narrow definition of personified. If you don't consider the relationship between the moment and the notice, the phrase makes no sense. Therefore, we must consider how much notice a moment would give, and to do that, you have to think about a moment having attributes like patience and forethought, which is very person-y. Ironically, I think the problem came when @FumbleFingers "misparsed" @RocketBouchard's sentence "The moment is personified and it is noticing." I think that the OP meant to use "noticing" as a verb as in "providing notice". Probably not the best choice when asking this kind of question. It also should be clarified that this personification is only happening with specific phrases like "moment's notice". Car's window, for instance, doesn't require us to know (or imagine) anything about the car or how it relates to the window.
Best Answer
View can have the meaning of "way/method/basis of understanding something." When you accept such a view, it will affect what you consider true/false and how you perceive things.
When you are in a view, you are part of and affected by the view. The view will affect what you consider true/false/real/unreal, etc.
On is the a preposition used to communicate the topic of an item, so on a view communicates more that you are talking about the view or considering the view as a topic, but not necessarily using that view to determine what is true/false/real/unreal, etc.
Example:
You don't have an opinion about the way he understands something.
He believes you don't have an opinion - since he is "in" his view.