I searched the archives but I didn’t find a thread on this already, but why are they running ABC’s Raising Hope back-to-back each week?
Why not do 1 hour shows instead, which would allow them to further develop their story lines? Is any other show doing this? Is there a good reason to do this?
Because the producers have no control over how the network airs the show.
The network ordered twelve (or however many) half-hour episodes, and that’s what the producers delivered. They were probably as surprised as anyone else that the episodes are being aired back-to-back.
Raising Hope started midseason so I think they’re trying to cram as much of the show as possible into a shorter timeline. That’s all.
I noticed Raising Hope didn’t start when other of ABC’s shows started this year, and I thought it might have been cancelled, but then we got back-to-back episodes, so I thought there must have been some logic to doing it that way.
Scuttlebutt is that this is the final season. If FOX plans to cancel it, I can understand why they’d schedule it for Fridays, but I don’t get why two eps. Have they done that for other shows on the chopping block?
WAG: Fox has taken a lot of flak over the years for cancelling shows with unaired episodes. Maybe they’re trying to avoid that (and possibly for contractual reasons) by doubling up in order to get Raising Hope out of the way and freeing up the timeslot.
Or maybe they just have a thin lineup and are padding it out with a known quanitity.
edit: nm, wrong thread
Yes, it’s called “dumping” or “burning off”. The trough between Thanksgiving and Christmas (really, up to February) doesn’t get really good ratings, so you pull your A-list shows, show repeats of them, or throw on content that you’ve paid for but don’t much care about. The last seasons of “The Drew Carey Show” make a good example - the network stuck it anywhere they had time to fill.
It’s not technically midseason until January</nitpick>
I think they just didn’t have anything to pair it up with. Enlisted (a military sitcom) was supposed to be paired with it on Fridays, but got pushed to the actual midseason at the last minute. All the other sitcoms were on Tuesday, so it was either double up Hope, hold back Hope, or pair Hope with a rerun.
Actually what they did was burn off the last season and a half during the summers those years (and completely out of order to boot). They really wanted to cancel it altogether, but Drew had an ironclad contract.