Dave
11-28-2011, 01:52 PM
The US scheduling of TV has always been a crap shoot from what I've seen. Because they want to spread the 22 to 24 episode season across 9 months, it simply doesn't fit.
The UK used to wait until January/February before starting any US shows so that we would get them all in sequence without any breaks, and by the time May/June arrived we'd have caught up with the finale of the US.
However, the internet age has made our TV channels more keen to show the episodes as close to the US airdate as possible, so we're beginning to see this patchwork season timeframe, our viewing pleasure of Fringe the other week was delayed because the US delayed by a week due to baseball, and the gods forbid we see it before the US :decision:.
But US TV has changed too, as shows have become more serialized they've noticed viewers don't like a repeat shoved in between two new episodes, so they've started to bunch them up, but because they are determined to hit key sweeps, and drag the season across 9 months, we now have mid season breaks.
This is probably the best solution in the long run, and as T4 said, you get two finales (although saying that, due to the baseball Fringe delay, the planned mid season finale is now scheduled as the first of the next block in the new year!).
FYI, British TV tends to have much smaller 'seasons', 6 is typical, 13 is becoming more popular for some formats. This means we show them without interruption, however Doctor Who had a mid-season break this year, the first time, and maybe a worrying sign of things to come.
This post was last modified: 11-28-2011, 01:54 PM by Dave.