Calling all Brits! -- Explain your TV seasons?

Cafe Society
1

I’ve realized that a somewhat pointless question has been lurking in my subconscious, stalking like a… big stalky thing.

Some of my favorite TV series are British comedies. What I find curious is that the length of a “season” for quite a lot of British half-hour comedy series is just 6 episodes to a season. Sometimes 7 or 8, if one is lucky. Examples include:

Blackadder
Red Dwarf
Fawlty Towers
Absolutely Fabulous
The Young Ones

And some of these series have gaps of more than one year between seasons (like Blackadder). I know there are exceptions – for instance, Monty Python’s Flying Circus had something like 13 episodes per season for the first couple years.

Makes me wonder what the norm is for TV seasons and number of shows in the UK, and does it differ for comedies vs. dramas? half-hour shows vs. hour-long shows? Is 6 episodes per season the current norm? Is a “season” a full year, or half a year, perhaps?

Here in the U.S., the current norm for a TV season is about 22 shows for a normal prime-time show, whether it’s a sitcom or a drama. There are some exceptions, but that seems to be about the norm now. And it used to be more.

So to my tea-sipping friends across the pond who refuse to speak the President’s English (:D) – do you actually have to put up with 46 weeks of re-runs each year? Just what is the story behind your TV seasons over there? If any of you could shed some light on this for me, I’d be as excited as… well… as a very excited person, who’s got a special reason to be excited!

2

Can’t say for sure, being on the same side of the pond as you, but I think it’s more likely they’d use the extra time to air other shows instead of just repeating stuff.

I do know that they air repeats of shows from other countries, much like our PBS stations do with their shows. The UK audience is the primary reason that the DVDs of MAS*H have the option of turning the laugh track off. That’s the way it was originally shown in the UK and they liked it better that way. They also got a big kick out of the ‘60s live action Batman series. It was shown as a replacement for some morning news program during a writers’ strike and got better ratings than the news ever did!

3

Quite simply, it doesn’t work in seasons :smiley:

You’re right, that many programs, particularly sitcoms, have short series. The big difference between the two countries is that most American sitcoms are the product of a whole creative team, whereas most British ones are written by just one or two people. Hence the greater concentration on a smaller total timeframe. As for the large gaps between series - partially it’s just the way it’s done, mainly due to a second series only being commissioned if the first is a success. But it’s also due to the smaller creative team - they need time to come up with new material, and may well have other things to do as well (other programmes, stand-up work, etc.)

Oh, and half-hour is definitely the standard format - but on the advert-free BBC, that works out as more material than an American half hour (two Simpsons episodes on back-to-back on the BBC take 40-45 minutes instead of an hour).

Yes, we do have far too many re-reuns (I end up watching Cheers re-runs on satellite, instead :wink: )…but there’s also plenty of shows that never make it onto American screens. I can’t see Little Britain going down too well…

4

That’s because it’s a bit bitty.

5

Thanks, GorillaMan, that helps. Although it does not alleviate the fact that I was left starving for more Blackadder episodes each “season”… :stuck_out_tongue:

Please, you silly Brits! Make more than 6!! Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze??? :smiley:

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Monstre – also, here’s a bit of UK vs. US English that’ll help you avoid confusion when talking to British people about TV shows. In Britain, a “series” is just that 6-13 episodes of a show that run in one year, not the whole television show for however-many years it might run.

I’ve seen UK/US conversations about the Star Trek “series” get hopelessly muddled over this, so take care! :slight_smile:

7

I would have already thought to apply that term to some shows, like Blackadder – a good example, because it really was 4 different sets of shows, each with a seperate cast and setting (with obviously some overlap on the cast). And it wasn’t a year-to-year consecutive run. Although I probably wouldn’t have thought to apply that term to other longer running shows with the same basic cast, like MP Flying Circus.

It does make more sense, though, in the context of GorillaMan’s explanation – that there really aren’t “seasons”, just runs of shows where the makers might get commissioned to make more, if it’s successful. And the shorter runs make more sense in this context too, at least financially – don’t want to make too many episodes before you know whether it will flop or not.

That actually brings up one thing that annoys me about the way many new American shows premiere in the fall. I’ve seen some begin that seem to have promise. But unless a show is an immediate ratings success, it’s likely to get cancelled before they’ve even aired 4 or 5 episodes. And sometimes a show never really gets a chance because as soon as one or two episodes are aired, its time slot is pre-empted by baseball playoff games (for fall premieres), and so it never really settles into a regular time.

Thanks for the terminology clarification. I must warn you, however, that you’ll still never convince me to think of a “torch” as something that takes batteries (you know, like a flashlight does). :smiley:

8

were you starving like a guy who’s really really hungry and hasn’t had enough to eat?

9

Seems to have gone down pretty well with Matt Groening and Johnny Depp. Although they’re probably not particularly representative of the average American audience…

10

Hoping not to hijack my own thread too much, but on a related question – what about the BBC?

I’ve never been to the UK, so I don’t really know how broadcasting works over there, as opposed to here in the U.S.

Is the BBC somewhat like the networks here – ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.?
Or is it more akin to an oversight organization, like the FCC? or something in between? Is it government-funded, or privately owned? I hear terms like “BBC One” and “BBC Two”, so I presume there are multiple BBC channels of programming. Is there any other organization that puts out public broadcast programming, as well?

11

Well, I found the “History of the BBC” link eventually (after some looking) on the BBC web site. So it looks like I found the answer to some of those questions. But the primary thing I’m curious about is whether they actually have any real competitors?

In British broadcasting, the only name I ever actually hear is BBC. Are they pretty much a monopoly in broadcasting in the UK? Or are there any competing organizations, and what’s the scale?

12

It’s a network, or a collection of networks. It has several national TV channels and numerous radio channels. It’s funded by the licence fee, a mandatory tax on the ownership of “equipment capable of receiving a TV signal” or words to that effect. Currently about £120 a year IIRC. it’s regulated by its own Board of Governors, and there’s currently some debate over whether there should be greater separation between the BBC and its regulators.

The other three TV networks are commercial, although one of them, Channel Four (in Britain, “channel” and “network” mean pretty much the same thing) has some kind of weird publicly-owned status that I’ve never quite got my head round.

And there are satellite and cable channels, of course. Satellite is bigger than cable, and Sky (Rupert Murdoch’s comapny) has a Microsoft-like monopoly in the satellite market.

13

OK, BBC1 is the Beeb’s biggest channel/network, and shows mainstream, popular stuff. The competitor is ITV, the original commercial network which started up in the 1950s. BBC1 and ITV (or ITV1 as they are now styling themselves) have traditionally vied for the biggest share of the audience. A highly-rated show on one of these channels would attract maybe a 40% audience share, but more typically they’ll be in the 20% range. ITV, originally a federation of regional commercial TV companies who were periodically awarded franchises by the government (with heavy provisos about the quality and “regionality” of their output), is now pretty much a single commercial entity, the bigger partners having swallowed up/merged with the small fry.

BBC2 was launched in the 60s and is supposed to cater to more esoteric tastes. It’s still pretty mainstream, though. Many of the Beeb’s most successful programmes were originally shown on BBC2 - if memory serves, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Black Adder, Red Dwarf, etc. Channel 4 was launched in 1982 as a sort of commercial BBC2, and has a decent track record, too, but its most popular shows are American - Friends, Frasier, ER, and now Simpsons repeats.

Another commercial terrestrial network, Channel 5, started in 1997. They’ve been quite canny about snapping up the US Hits that Channel 4 overlooks, like CSI and its spin-offs. BBC2, Channel 4, and Channel 5 all get about 10% audience share on average.

And then there’s a plethora of “digital” channels - channels only available to satellite, cable, and digital terrestrial viewers. The biggest are Sky One (endless Simpsons and Star Trek), Sky Sports and Sky Movies pay channels, rerun channels like UK Gold and Paramount Comedy, BBC3 and BBC4, ITV2. Most of these channels would kill to get a 1% audience share.

14

And known to millions of Americans as the producer of The Muppet Show.

15

That was ITC/ATV. Confusing, I know, but it was not ITV, who were still the “federation of regional commercial TV companies” back then.

16

A few more words on the BBC:

Its status is provided by a ten-year charter - so every decade, parliament scrutinises it, and decides whether it should be allowed to continue in its present form, or what changes should be made. And each time, the debate ranges from those who want to sell it off wholesale, and those who want to keep it as it is.

And among its other activities apart from the five national TV channels (everybody’s ignored BBC News so far) - ten national radio stations, a full network of local radio (40 stations in England alone), local TV news stations, fairly significant TV programming for Wales, Scotland and N Ireland, five symphony orchestras, …

17

Usram – Thanks for the detailed replies. Very helpful. On the licence fee you mentioned, is that just to fund BBC? or does that fund other networks (like ITV) as well? If not, how are they funded? And are BBC shows totally commercial-free, then? or do they just have fewer than the ones here? (a “30-minute” show here probably gets something like 20-22 minutes of actual show time, if that).

And I assume you mean that if you own a TV, for instance, you pay this fee?

And I definitely figured there were a plethora of cable and satellite channels, just like over here. I’m mostly curious about what would be the closest equivalent to the major networks we have here (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX) that broadcast the signal over the airwaves, which somebody with just a TV can pick up (i.e. without cable or satellite subscriptions). Sounds like mainly BBC and ITV, then?

18

Yep, the money is for the BBC only, and is a requirement for each household that owns a TV. ITV and other commercial channels are advertising funded. And yes, BBC1+BBC2+ITV is the equivalent of the major networks.

The BBC has no adverts - and indeed, has strict rules about any mentioning of brand names etc. at all. (It’s nothing like infomercial-laden public service broadcasting.) So a 30-min show is 27-28 minutes of material. Try timing a Blackadder episode - I’d be surprised if they’re any shorter than that.

19

the ‘teaser’ used never to be a feature of British drama programmes, to the extent that episodes of ‘Star Trek’ were re-edited so that the first thing the viewer heard was, “Space; the final frontier…”. Commercial breaks were also edited out, with the cliffhanger for the break immediately followed by the resolution. We also got the full versions, not the shortened episodes for syndicated re-runs.
Nowadays people are sufficiently accustomed to the concept of the teaser that this practice has been dropped, and a lot of British dramas use it too. Mostly dramas & sitcom will get 6-8-10 episodes which will take them most of the way from autumn when people actually start watching TV again to Christmas when the normal schedules are suspended. Only long-running established soaps like ‘Coronation Street’, ‘EastEnders’ and the cop show ‘The Bill’ will get continous 52-week seasons.
There is currently a great deal of debate about the basis on which TV should be funded, as the licence fee which felt natural when there was only one channel, or even three by the late '60s, becomes less defensible with the multiplication of satellite and cable channels. The received wisdom is that there is not enough advertising revenue out there to fund all of them through paid commercials. Anyone who has travelled in America, and seen the unique awfulness of American network television (and it really is frightful, I didn’t think the stories could be true but they are) will agree that that is not the model we want to follow.
There are no local TV stations here, in the sense of the city having it’s own station. There are some gestures towards regional programming for different parts of the country but mostly the channel will show the same programmes in the same running order at (mostly) the sames times throughout the country.

20

Right – I have the full Blackadder DVD set, and I already knew they were the full half-hour. Something I’ve always been quite happy about. Counting the opening sequences and closing credits (which sometimes contain little humorous bits after), I think they are in the 29-30 minute range, most of them.

So does this fact (no ads on BBC shows) tend to make BBC more popular than channels like ITV? (sounds like it could be hard to judge since they appear to dominate the broadcasting market through sheer prevalence, just like Microsoft vs. other major computer companies over here).

On a side note, I’ve just recently gotten into Red Dwarf, and am currently reading the first novel, Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers.