British television scheduling

Based on the episodes that have appeared in the United States, it appears that several British comedy series produce a limited number of episodes; many for example seem to produce only six half-hour episodes each year.

In the United States, these series are usually broadcast with several years worth of episodes shown consecutively. How are they originally broadcast in the UK? Were six weekly episodes broadcast and then some other series take its place? Were the six episodes rebroadcast in a second run in the same year? When a new series of six more episodes is made, do the original episodes from the previous year get rebroadcast?

Difficult to say without specific examples because I don’t think UK scheduling is as strictly defined into ‘seasons’ as are the US Networks – well, the start dates of a season might be similar but the duration of a series is more flexible.

I don’t think six is the magic number, it really depends on a compromise between what the commissioners want and what the writers think they can produce of a reasonable quality.

As regards re-broadcasting, policy would varies between each of the major (three) UK networks and depend on a huge number of variables. My understanding is it’s very flexible and a judgement call.

Perhaps the most important easily identifiable aspect to the UK market is the absence for the BBC to generate advertising revenue – this seems to engender a quality control dimension to commissioning in as far as there is not the acute pressure to ‘stretch’ good idea’s beyond what the writers feel is good material This, in turn, has a knock on effect on competitors who can’t afford to let their quality drop. Also, it can mean ‘slow burners’ can have a bettr chance of a second season if the idea’s and potential look good.

And no one makes decent money out of UK sitcoms – working for the BBC (for established talent) is pretty much a labour of love so no one can get too pushy about producing material.

Probably not a lot of help. Sorry !

I’ve seen several series that are broadcast for a few months and then there is a break for the rest of the year followed by the next series.

As an example the comedy DADS ARMY used to be shown for around three months, then nothing for six months, it would then be repeated followed by the new episodes, keep going until the series is finally taken off air.

The worst example I can think of are the Star Trek TNG, DS9 and Voyager series.

The BBC has a season of maybe three months,and operates in a similar way to the first example.This would be ok but what they also do is drop any or all of these programs on the slightest pretence, so one week you might be stuck with Wimbledon, then Ryder cup golf, then cricket, then soccer world cup, instead of the show you wanted to see.

What makes these things particularly galling is that it is always always at the main viewing time for children who are likely not interested in many of those alternatives, geez one week it was the bloody Chelsea flower show.

It has also stretched out the BBC schedules so much that last year I don’t recall seeing any new episodes of one of the Trekky shows, just the repeats which winds me up as I hear frieds with Sky satellite talking about episodes that are up to two seasons aheead of the BBC, indeed I believe there is an entire new Trekkie series which the BBC hasn’t yet announced that it will even screen.

This does mean that the BBC does sometimes get to show some unusual offerings that no other network could, for example, there was a series too many years agocalled The Shillingbury Tales which were made by young directors under a brief from the BBC who asked them to come up with something.
The result was a series of whimsical, charming little shows but they were all of differant lengths, very differant lengths.Most tv networks ould not have been able to accommodate such flexibility in their scheduling from something like 35 minutes for an episode to around 10 minutes, the constraints of advertising to a target audience and the need to guaruntee advertising revenue would ensure that, and yet that series was a good one and was worth making.

I’ve noticed this too.

Monty Python ran four seasons but it was only 13 episodes a season (13 is only a half-season in the US).

More so, Fawlty Towers only did two seasons, two years apart, and they were only six episodes each.

And The Young Ones only did 12 episodes over the course of nearly four years!

I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining. I wish US sitcoms would go for quality instead of quantity.

Six programmes is the key figure used by the schedulers on British TV (particularly the BBC), although they are now much more flexible about this than they used to be. The idea is that eight series of six programmes take up forty-eight weeks, leaving four weeks to be filled with Christmas specials and the sort of one-off events casdave objects to. Nine, twelve and thirteen programmes are the favoured alternatives, but are rarely used for sitcoms. This does create something akin to seasons, although less obviously so than on the U.S. networks. ‘Major series’ (I use the term loosely) tend to be scheduled for the autumn or early in the New Year, whereas the summer is very much a dead period (there does seem to be nothing but repeats on at the moment).

How is making a series in this way cost-effective? I’ve always wondered how shows like Fawlty Towers and Absolutely Fabulous make any money. You have to build those sets for the same money - why not get more use out of 'em? We certainly appreciate that you put more value on well-written shows, and say what you’ve got to say and then stop (how quaint), but don’t tell me you haven’t got bean-counters, or whomever it is who decides which shows will be produced, who’d like to see something running for a long time. Do they count on being able to show those 12 or 18 episodes over and over and over for years to come, and to sell broadcast rights to the US and other countries? How do new shows attract viewers? By the time it’s catching on, it’s done! So people just turn on the set at 7:00 and watch whatever’s on, and every 6 weeks they’re watching something new? Blasphemy!

Of course in America, it’s all about commercials and sponsors. We show, what, at least 12 minutes of commercials during an hour-long program, while British TV charges for licenses and hardly shows any commercials at all. And I can’t imagine seeing a flower show on network TV in prime-time.

Darn foreigners! We take our TV watching seriously in this country! :wink:

Yes

Any new shows the networks think are going to take off are heavily advertised well in advance. Otherwise people read listings magazines.

Commercial stations have about half that number of ads, the two BBC channels don’t have any. You’re right about the licence, and that usually seems very alien to Americans of my acquaintance – it costs £109 per year at the moment and it’s illegal not to have one if you want to watch TV. The government has a special register of every address in the country and makes housecalls to addresses that don’t have a licence. They have surveillance equipment that can check from the street outside if you are watching TV and are allowed to fine you about £1000 if you are without a licence!

Something for everyone – the BBC is a public service broadcaster.

We do too!:slight_smile:

:eek::eek::eek: Good God man! You aren’t joking, are you? This sounds like Big Brother’s incompetent and somewhat daft sibling Medium-Sized Brother.

How can something like this be enforced if this “surveillance equipment” can be defeated by just closing your window shades? Here in America, we have a thing called “state sales tax” (in most states); it is automatically collected on sales within the state. It also technically applies to purchases made in other states, but a state government cannot force a merchant in another state to collect it.

So, in Vermont for instance, if I live near the New Hampshire border, I can drive over there, make my purchases tax free (NH has no sales tax), and bring them home. Technically, I am required by law to report these purchases and remit the appropriate tax to the Vermont government, but nobody, and I mean nobody, does this.

I have also read elsewhere that in, say, Japan, people refuse to jaywalk or cross a street against the light even if there is no traffic visible on the street. If you tried this in America people would look at you like you’re ret…ummm, no, what’s the acceptable phrase now?..mentally challenged. Yeah, that’s it.

I think we Americans just have a healthy disrespect for the law.

Actually, that’s more or less true in Seattle as well. (for a while there was a UL going around that the brand new police chief from another city saw a bunch of people hanging around on the corner of an otherwise empty street in the middle of the night and thought “aha, that’s probably criminal activity going on.” When the light changed, the walk sign went on, and everyone crossed.)

But a TV license is just odd. Do you need one for every television, or just one per house? And does the surveillance equipment work with apartment buildings?

And do you have to buy one if you just use your TV to watch pre-recorded stuff (with the VCR and DVD) and never watch broadcast television?

No, he isn’t joking. Knowledge of the TV license will help with your appreciation of references in some British comedy shows, too.

Of course, over here we have the PBS / NPR technique as well as commercial television and radio - every so often the station directly solicits money from the viewers. These “pledge breaks”, where the stations get out their begging bowls and hit you up on the air is something that is unknown in the UK, I think. I’ve talked to Brits who came over here and seemed to find that phenomenon quite strange, anyway.

IIRC, the license is required for equipment capable of receiving TV signals, so it doesn’t matter if you actually watch TV or not. One license covers as many TV sets as you like in one household, although not in multiple occupancy residences such as student halls…ouch!

I personally think the license is worthwhile, funding two decent commercial free channels, part funding a third (Channel 4), five national radio stations (commercial free) plus the local ones too. It’s not a bad deal really, it’s just the lack of choice in the matter that irritates a tad.

Okay, maybe my OP was a little vague. I’ll illustrate with actual examples. Consider the series Blackadder. The show consisted of four individual series each with six half hour episodes (plus a couple of specials that I’ll ignore for the purposes of this post). In the US, the entire series is generally run as twenty four weekely episodes.

But how was it originally broadcast in the UK? Presumedly, the first six episodes were produced and broadcast with no foreknowledge of whether there would be future episodes. So those six episodes must have originally been broadcast as a potentially complete series.

Were they broadcast for six consecutive weeks and then disappear? Were they broadcast for six weeks and then rebroadcast for a second six week run? If so, was the second run consecutive with the first run or a few months later? When the second series was produced and broadcast, was the first series also rebroadcast with it?

I’d like to point out that I’m only using Blackadder as a general example here. Hopefully its broadcast history was typical. What I’m interested in is not the specific history of this show but an general idea about how shows like this are broadcast.

It’s not entirely true. Although CCTV is very common, it’s not cameras that track TV usage, but TV detector vans:

(from http://www.tv-l.co.uk/)

The vans aren’t constantly on patrol in some ‘Big Brother’-esque style, but if you genuinely do not have a TV the heavy-handedness is ridiculous. My mum doesn’t have a TV in the flat she stays in for the consulting job she’s on, and she’s constantly being sent letters threatening all kinds of penalties for failing to have a license.

The license, although expensive, is justifiable in theory, since it allows the BBC to provide programmes without commercial pressures to reduce everything to lowest common denominator TV. Of course, this is debatable in practice.

Other than that, Brits have a healthy (well, unhealthy) disrespect for the law as much as anyone else. Jaywalking? What’s that? Buying from other states? Well, cross-Channel ‘booze cruises’ to take advantage of French drinks prices are openly advertised by ferry companies.

The episodes are shown as a complete run. Subsequent series’ are also shown completely, often with the preceding series shown as repeats in the weeks immediately before (to whet appetites).

Some WAGs here:

  1. The BBC is not famous for paying actors huge wages. Thus, to attract big names it has to allow them to explore other work during the year – hence the limited runs of series’.

  2. Established comedians command large wages and contract demands, and are relatively few and far-between, so the channels fall over themselves to accommodate their desires to write, make films and so on.

  3. Because the BBC has a fixed finite amount of money to work with (i.e. can’t up advertising rates) it cannot gamble on long unproven series’, so makes limited runs to test public opinion.

  4. Established comedy (i.e. the ‘family-friendly’ peak time ratings winners) is very poor in the UK, and most recent attempts have flopped. Because of this, producers and schedulers are increasingly reluctant to pay for long first runs.

As I say, just WAGs.

Funny thing is, they usually do it while showing a new series of “Red Dwarf” or a “Monty Python” or “Blackadder” marathon.

I’d endorse Crusoe’s comments, but would also add that Blackadder had a different cast and writing team between the first series and the others. The first series wasn’t very popular but showed promise, so they commissioned more. In a purely commercial environment it would’ve been dropped after a couple of episodes, let alone a whole series. I think we have far fewer ‘pilot’ shows here than you do in the US.

The comparative decline in mainstream comedy on the BBC is a recent problem. If I could explain it I’m sure I’d be a very rich man (how much does Greg Dyke get?), but I don’t think it has anything to do with the public service nature of the Beeb.

It’s not exactly what other people are talking about, but it fits with the thread title, so I had to bring this up.
I love British TV, but the scheduling is weird. One time (several years ago) when I visited London I turned on the TV in the middle of the day and saw, in rapid succession, a TV game show (based on an American game show), a Tweety and Sylvester cartoon, and an Open University short film explaining Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors.

“Something for everyone” indeed! What kind of sense does that progression make? "Kids, leave the TV on after Tweety – Mom wants to catch her Advanced Math course.

An American in Germany reporting in.
Since this thread has been discussing licenses, I thought I’d kick in my two cents.
You must pay a license here as well when you own any equipment capable of receiving broadcasts. This goes for radio receivers as well as TVs. There was some discussion of including internet capable PCs on the premise that you could listen to “radio” broadcasts over the internet, but thankfully they dropped the idea (for now, at least.)
The monthly fee around twenty dollars US goes to support the state run radio and TV stations. This is apparently laid out in the basic laws of the country: The government must provide for a basic level news availability in the country. Since the Goverment provides for news programs, the private stations put out “news” programs that are the equivalent of the National Inquirer on TV.
This all has certain advantages:
The state run stations can provide content that is not dependent on income from commercials. This means movies that run non-stop, and educational programs that come on at times when normal, working people can watch them. OK, the non-stop movie thing can be a pain when you need to go piss and don’t want to miss any of the action but it is still better than having so many commercials that the movie runs for twice as long as it should.
The private stations don’t have to spend a great deal of time, effort, and money on news programs and can concentrate more on entertainment.
It also has a disadvantage that really worries me at times. The news programs are sponsored by the state. Can you say “Propaganda machine?” Protest that it doesn’t happen all you want, but let me tell it does. This was escpecially noticeable during the last American presidential election. Every news program and documentary about the elections on the state run channels blasted Bush and praised Gore. The fiasco in Florida was represented as Bush’s fault, even though it was the Gore supporters who forced the issue and caused the rat fuck. As a result of this, if you ask your average German his opinion of the current US president, you will get a very negative answer. These are the average citizens, whose main interests are soccer and making sure that there is enough beer in the fridge, and they will bitch about Bush as if they actually had a grasp of the issues. “Bush? (Belch) Money grubbing, big business pandering, (fart) enemy of the environment. Now, move out of the way (ass scratch.) The soccer game is starting on the state run station (booger dig) and I can’t see through you.”
This is not in support of Bush. I am bitching about extremely slanted reporting in a state run news agency. I will grant you that there are Germans who understood the issues and liked or disliked the candidates based on their understanding. My boss doesn’t like Bush because he (my boss) thinks Bush’s policies have helped strengthen the Dollar against the Euro, and thus make it harder for our company to do business with our partners in the US. I am not talking about that. I am talking about Fritz Jedermann (Joe Average, sort of) having his opinions handed to him by his government.

So. That was a rather long hijack, but now I would like to ask the British dopers a question:
Since you have pretty much the same setup as Germany, do you also have concerns about the impartiality of the news?

I’m struggling to answer your questions, Nemo but here we go:

I don’t know / can’t recall the specifics of the Blackadder schedules (we’re talking 10-15 years ago, now) although I feel certain in saying they were originally broadcast in groups of six shows with a routine of one show a week. Re-broadcasting is a much more fluid game when your scheduling contains a whole bunch of series running for six weeks, others for eight, some for twelve or thirteen (rather than in standardised blocks of twenty-six weeks) – you can more readily respond to any of the variables that affect the art of scheduling.

So…are no hard and fast rules about how and when any of these shows are re-broadcast except the idea is to maximise the potential market share. Also, as a general rule, it’s worth remembering the BBC doesn’t operate in the same way as do American networks:. The fundamental concept is different and not driven by, for example, prospective advertiser demands or the need to project profit figures twelve months hence. There is just less pressure, I guess.

** Mort Furd ** - As regards the broadcasting of, and influence over, news: The BBC is almost completely independent of the State. I believe the Government does have some input in the level of the license fee but, as Margaret Thatcher discovered when she mooted the notion of changing the Health Service, there are certain things no sensible politician should try and change. The independence of the BBC is one of those.

For an insight into how the set-up works take a look at the Charter:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/bbc/charter.shtml

The independence is emphasised, for example, at election time when all parties vie for media attention and routinely claim the BBC is biased against them. There is a very strong tradition of quality independent news broadcasting at the BBC – as there should be when the public pay for a information service directly

Also, it is completely independent of corporate interests because of the license fee funding mechanism and that is an invaluable asset in the quest for independent information.

It ain’t perfect but it is one hell of a news source that encourages fairly acute scrutiny.