Cable TV doesn’t have the budget that network TV does.
Network TV has found a formula that maximizes profits, and they’re sticking with it.
Sage Rat, thanks for the info, will check them out.
I made this poll an all or nothing one because there are so many ways of that T.V shows can be well made, and as others have pointed out there have been a lot that have been made well even with long seasons. Yes, it does depend on the writers, actors and producers but generally speaking would shorter runs improve shows or would a culture of shorter seasons create an environment that promotes better quality shows? That’s the question, sorry if it was unclear.
Remember, networks don’t care about quality: they care how many people are watching. If they can get a big audience with quality, they’d be happy to; if they can get a big audience with a terrible show, then they’ll be happy with that, too.
But that’s the whole point! 2 1/2 Men and According to Jim would be greatly improved with shorter runs! Then there’d only be a maximum of 8 per season so there wouldn’t be as much of it! 
There are also lots of Japanese live-action TV series, which tend to be in the range of 10 to 13 episodes, telling a sequential narrative, and coming to a definite conclusion. One of my favorites is Shopping Hero, in 11 episodes.
South Korea and Taiwan also have live-action TV series, but tending to be significantly longer than Japanese ones (20 episodes would be normal).
Again, things are changing a little bit, and we’re starting to see more of the ‘regular slot’ kind of deal you’re talking about, but essentially, it’s not really like that. We do have ‘strands’ - so Thursday night on BBC2 is traditionally a comedy slot, 9pm on a weeknight on ITV(1) is generally premium 1 hour drama and so on. I also seem to recall that certain nights are regarded as more highly prized than others - and certainly some channels, even within a broadcaster, are. So, a programme may start on a Sunday evening on BBC2, but if it’s a real success it may move to BBC1 on a Friday evening for its next series, for example.
But apart from such strands, series-type tv (as opposed to soaps/news etc which have their own permanent slots and there’s usually uproar if they move) don’t have a permanent slot. When Peep Show is on, as an example, it’s likely to be on a Friday night on Channel 4 if I remember correctly, but it may be at 10, 10.30 or whatever, depending on what else is also running. When it’s not on, something else will be scheduled, but if it filled a part of a strand (which it did/does) that something else would likely be something similar.
Our attitude to repeats seems very different too. When a series is on, that week’s episode may well be repeated a couple of times on related channels. So, for instance, we have Desperate Housewives on a Wednesday on Channel 4, and that week’s episode is also on on Sunday on E4 (its related satellite channel), along with a ‘preview’ showing of the next week’s episode. Once this current series is finished, that will stop. However, in another timeslot entirely the same channel group (or a different one) may well be showing previous seasons, but crucially this will be in order, and won’t be related to any new series that is currently being shown in the ‘normal’ timeslot. An example of this is the constant Friends rerun one of the satellite channels has been doing (they’ve just announced that this will be stopping soon). They go to the end of the whole thing, then start again from the beginning. It’s always in order.
The idea of assigning a slot to a programme and filling up with random repeats when you haven’t got any new episodes to show is not something we do, and it seems really strange to me. A very common whinge is that there are too many repeats on tv anyway. So when we have no new episodes of x, we want new episodes of something else, thank you very much - which is one of the multitude of reasons we import so much TV I guess.
Playing syndicated reruns in order is extremely common on all North American channels. I daresay that the average television viewer could watch episodes of Friends, Seinfeld, Law & Order and The Simpsons all day, every day if he or she wanted to.
It’s not necessarily “random” repeats; generally they go in chronological order, as far as I know.
Thanks for the explanation!
On the five main terrestrial channels it’ll be another show in the timeslot. There are corresponding digital channels that do show reruns from the parent channels though, although it’ll be the whole series in order rather than random episodes. Then there’s a whole slew of satellite channels, but I don’t know what they do.
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Charley’s ** explanation is much better than mine.
I don’t think the season length is the problem. I think the number of seasons is the problem. Shows should go for 3-4 years and then end. If they want to take a subset of characters or plots and keep going, make a new series.
Having a show go for 6+ years just doesn’t work: kids grow up, people move jobs, company/job structure changes. The U.S. Office is a perfect example of this- more people have been added to the cast in order to bring in more story lines, ridiculous lengths have been used to keep the Scranton Dunder-Mifflin office effectively intact, characters become a cartoon of themselves as “this is why the audience likes the character so much”.
The refusal to kill a show that is too far gone from its original good story line is the problem with the American system.
It really depends on the show. There were some excellent episodes of The Simpsons in season 6+, for instance.
We can all agree that shows should quit while they’re ahead. But that point will differ from show to show, I think.
Same for Stargate: SG1.
I say they can do whatever the hell they like, as long as they’ve got the quality to back it up.
The problem for us, as an audience, though, is that “quit while they’re ahead” means something different from an artistic point of view than it does from a business point of view.
Television networks aren’t really in the business of making art at all. They’re in the business of selling audiences to advertisers. If they stopped producing a show while it was still in the prime of its artistic life, they’d lose millions of dollars in ad revenue. It actually makes business sense for a show to continue running for a while, even after the quality starts to dip, because the networks know that a loyal audience will stick with the thing for at least another season (probably longer), just to make sure that it really has jumped the shark.
Stargate: SG1 got better the longer it ran. Seasons 8-10 are my favorite ones.
That’s not really what happens here in the US, either. The phenomenon you describe is what we’d call “mid-season replacements,” where a timeslot is ceded from one show that ended its season to another show that starts its season. 24 and American Idol are example of this, both typically starting after New Year’s, skipping the fall season completely.
The only time random repeats are shown is when there are new episodes still to run.
Not really true. The most-watched networks (ITV1, BBC1) don’t show much US programming, and basically none in peak time. Among the second tier (BBC2, Channel 4, Five), Five does have quite a lot of US shows. Channel 4 has a few, such as Glee and Desperate Housewives, and daytime runs of older stuff like Friends or Will & Grace. BBC2 has the occasional US series like Heroes or The Wire.
The time is instead filled with crappy British shows, of which there are plenty.
I voted no, but I’m not sure if it took or not.
I’d rather have a few great episodes, a whole bunch of watchable episodes, and a few stinkers than a few great, a few watchable, and a stinker or two.
Sorry, I think this is what I meant. I got the impression that with a new season of programme X, you’d get episodes say 1-12 shown in order, let’s say on a Thursday night. Then we get to the mid-season break and instead of going on and showing episode 13 next, the network shows a repeat of an old episode in the same slot on Thursday night. That repeated episode could have come from any other previous season of this show. This happens for a few weeks, then we get back to the main season and pick up episodes 13 - 2whatever. The impression I got was that this happens when episodes 13+ aren’t actually made yet, or at least are only in production.
Is that right? Is that what happens? I may have got this completely bass-ackwards obviously.
Sorry if this is too big a hijack but it is all related to the length of the seaons I think. If all the shows do this at around the same time of the year (if I’ve understood correctly) don’t the audience numbers plummet then? Or are people mostly happy to watch repeats instead of new episodes? Like I said in the previous post, it’s one of the cliche moans here ‘there’s too many repeats on tv’.
Yes, you have it right.
But you have that last part backwards. When all shows are in repeats it’s not that the repeats make audience numbers plummet, but rather that the audience is out doing other things so they put on repeats. You wouldn’t want to air a new episode on New Year’s Eve, for example.
EDIT: Or during the Olympics, for another example.
Aaaah, ok. So the mid-season break (and so repeats) isn’t something they do every year and all do at the same time? Or is it that they do, but they time it for that time because that’s when the other stuff normally happens?
(thanks for all the info by the way, it’s always puzzled me. One day I’ll pluck up the mental image to post a question about syndication. I’'ve read the Wikipedia article several times and I’m still not getting it!)
We would all have been better off if Firefly’s run had been shorter. Like 13 episodes shorter. It also would have saved certain Fox executives from Eternal Damnation.