I just stumbled on the old series Combat! (produced in the early to mid-60s) at Youtube, and see that for at least the first two seasons (there were 5 in all), there were 32 hour-long episodes in each season. I remember 26 week series. but I don’t remember any 32 week series. Was this unusual at the time. or common?
Gilligan’s Island had 98 episodes in 3 seasons
Bewitched List of Bewitched episodes - Wikipedia had 36 episodes in its first seasons, 38 in the second, and 33 in the third.
Looks like shorter seasons started about 1970 or so.
Early TV didn’t have well defined seasons. Networks would order a certain number of shows, sometimes numbering over a hundred. Shooting often ran continuously. Some of the hour dramas could barely be finished fast enough to make the air dates. I recall Raymond Burr was housed at the studio during the filming of Perry Mason because the schedule was so tight. The concept of the 26 week season developed in the 60s and gradually became standard. Now with the advent of cable and online telecasts the season concept has changed again as commitments for a series are made in much smaller chunks. There was still plenty of experimentation all along, the NBC Mystery Movie series introduced Columbo and a variety of other drama series that ran on a rotating schedule, later moved to different days of the week. During one horrible year for one of the networks they would debut new series as often as they could get them on the air looking for a winner. Midseason replacements would have a short number of episodes committed early on and needed great success to be renewed.
When sweeps months became common, repeats during non-sweeps months became increasingly common a goodly percentage of the time. Not sure when thet happened, tho.
Used to be they’d have summer replacement programs. It was a good way to try out a new program to see if they wanted to keep it. Now they tape not more than 26 episodes so they can fill a year with the first run and a rerun.
I’ve been watching some episodes of The Rifleman, and was shocked by the high episode numbers. According to Wikipedia, there were 40 episodes in the first season. The numbers went down each successive season, but there were still over 30 episodes in each of the first four seasons.
Very early TV didn’t have reruns (they were done live), so there were plenty of episodes. To give everyone a break, they would use summer replacement series. By the end of the 50s, US TV had standardized with 36 weeks of new episodes and 13 weeks of reruns (or a 13-week replacement series).
As costs went up, fewer episodes were filmed. It quickly went to 26 weeks of new, and rerunning every episode. That number was cut down further as shows were expected to be preempted a few times a season.
Sweeps always existed, but they were originally ignored. As costs went up, networks realized it was more cost-effective to only show new episodes during sweeps. You used to only see reruns in the summer; now they are also on the air in December-January and March.