Living in England not the least of joys that the coming of the internet brought was that you no longer had to wait 6 months or a year for British TV to air the hot US shows. Now they go up somewhere on the net almost at the same time they air in the States, which is great, but that brings me to my question.
You’re following avidly the latest season of House or The Chicago Code or NCIS or whatever when suddenly, bam! no more episodes of House for a month bam! instead of a new episode of The Chicago Code it’s a repeat. It seems to happen all the time, I can understand shows giving way for the Superbowl, etc but why put a repeat episode up midseason? Or suddenly replace the show for a documentary or reality show for one week?
Does this drive you guys as crazy as it does me or are you so inured to it now that it doesn’t bother you? And it goes without saying both House and The Chicago Code are repeats tonight!
Yes, yes it does. But because I don’t have cable anymore I just watch everything on Hulu and each day I check the shows I subscribe to. If there’s a new one on there, great, if not, oh well. I’ve learned to not get my hopes up.
It’s simple: according to tradition, network shows start in the fall (usually September-October) and end in the last week of May. There are usually between 22 and 26 episodes a season.
Now, in November, February and May are “sweeps”, where ratings are measured to set advertising rates. That means show have to be broadcast throughout those months (it’s also why shows always seem to peak at around the 7th, 13th and 22nd episodes). That’s 12 episodes right there. The remaining 10-14 eps are spread out among the remaining 5-7 months. Do the math - there have to be gaps.
(Cable shows are different - they’re similar to the UK, with shorter seasons that start and end whenever).
Because the shows are driven by ratings and there are three major ratings “sweeps” periods in the year: November, February, and May. While ratings are taken weekly, the sweeps time is when the ratings are used to determine ad rates for local stations. Consequently, the network wants to run new episodes during the sweeps periods in order to maximize audience.
When shows ran 39 episodes in the 50s, this was never a problem, but most TV shows only have 22 episodes a season. If you ran them all without a stop, you’d run out of episodes before the May sweeps.
In addition, there are certain times – like Christmas – where the TV audience is down, so there’s no reason to run a new episode. Also, it doesn’t usually make sense to run new episodes opposite big ratings events like the Super Bowl or March Madness.
So US TV dramatic series run new episodes from the end of September until mid-December, go on reruns (and preemptions) for about a month, run new episodes from mid-January through February, go back to reruns (and preemptions, plus the occasional new series), and finally start with new episodes from mid-April until Memorial Day.
There are some exceptions. Cable series often run all episodes at once, often at times when the networks are in reruns. Also, some series do run without a break (24 did for several seasons). Reality shows don’t go into reruns, either. But most scripted comedies and dramas have to go to that staggered schedule.
Another major factor that I don’t think was mentioned specifically was that a show like House takes at least 8 days to shoot a single episode. So there’s no way you can do a whole season, even if shooting starts 2 months early, without some breaks after broadcasting starts. There’s always some snags and like SciFiSam says, you need to give the cast and crew some time off.
I’ve observed that most cable shows run in two parts per season. There will be about eight shows run at the start of the season, then a mid-season break of about four months or so, then the back end of the season will be run with the remaining eight episodes.
I can only think of four shows total that are aired that way, two on USA, two on TNT. (Psych, Saving Grace, Monk, The Closer)
The vast majority of cable shows, from In Plain Sight, Warehouse 13 and Harthorne to True Blood and Dexter, air all at once, with maybe a week or two without back to back episodes due to holiday weekends.
SciFi/SyFy has the odd habit of splitting each show’s season into 2 ten episode half seasons then airing them 6-12 months apart. Battlestar Galactica’s first season was spared this because it only had 13 episodes, but season 2 was split. Ronald Moore was able to convince the network that his wasn’t the best fit for BSG and season 3 aired in a straight shot. Then season 4 was split (& had to deal with the WGA strike).
I can think of four more: South Park, Burn Notice, Royal Pains, Futurama. In fact, it seems as if most of the programs I watch on cable split their seasons.
American network TV just plain sucks. Yeah, that’s it.
American Cable does tend to handle their airings much better. One thing that cable has going for them is they will usually re-air the same episode a couple times throughout the week, so not everybody has to be watching it at the same time.
My only gripe with cable shows is most of them do much shorter seasons. 13 per YEAR is the standard, often aired in runs of 6 or 7 with a long break in the middle. However, those 13 are more often than not much higher quality and production value. That 22 a year thing is really overkill for many network shows.
The current system of scheduling American network TV dates back to the days before people had VCRs and cable TV, let alone DVRs and the internet. It still makes some sense today, but it made even more sense then, and there’s never been a complete overhaul of the system.
If you’re in charge of scheduling, you show the same shows at the same times and days of the week, week after week, so that people can get in the habit of watching their favorite shows: it becomes part of their weekly routine throughout the year. But rather than come up with a new episode every week from September through May, it’s cheaper and easier to occasionally re-run some previously aired episodes. As long as you don’t do this too often, you won’t lose too much of your audience: some people will have missed the episode the first time around, others may be glad of the chance to see it again.
Yeah whatever They do might suck, but I cannot begin to imagine life with 6 episodes a year. I actually watch a lot of British tv and there is nothing on right now that is in my list of shows. And there won’t be anything until, like, July. And then it’ll be good for 6 weeks and will all be gone again.
I’ve never followed a cable show with a split season. I think we’ll have to conceed that a lot show them straight through and a lot show them split, since we can both come up with lots of examples that ahere to what we consider typical (more non-split: Raising the Bar, Haven, Southland, Covert Affairs, Memphis Beat, Sons of Anarchy, just about everything on HBO, Showtime, and Starz etc).
But isn’t Futurama on Fox?
With the exception of 2010’s Christmas episode, Eureka’s epsiodes have all aired mid-summer through early fall.
Are they ever going to drop this emphasis on the “sweeps” periods? I can’t believe it’s actually necessary these days. They surely have access to accurate ratings all year round?
Some of the US shows are shown here in the UK a few days after they’re shown in North America but the best thing about them not starting in the UK until January or February is that for the most part, the entire season is shown uninterrupted and catches up to the end only a week or so after it has finished in the States. That we we don’t have to endure all the breaks in programming and all the repeats. We have the Hallmark Channel for that!