Re: Are TV Show season's getting too short?
 

That is what you wrote:
However, you were interpreting/agreeing with this post:
Hence the confusion.

How do you know they didn't show repeats on the skipped weeks? You list Bonanza seasons as having some weeks without episodes, but all that really shows are weeks without new episodes. A repeat episode may have been aired on those non-new weeks.

Re: Are TV Show season's getting too short?
 

You are correct. In my instance, I'm fairly certain they were repeats. I remember watching Cheers when it was on and they only repeated a few episodes during those "bye" weeks (e.g. Holidays). But they most certainly showed repeats before the summer. The summer, however, was strictly ALL repeats until FOX started stuff like 90210 new episodes in the summer.

Re: Are TV Show season's getting too short?
 

That's why I specified the missed episodes were on holidays. Holiday specials. When I was growing up in the 60s thru about 1972 a show would sometimes not be on because they were showing a special but you never saw a rerun till the season was over. Once you saw a rerun you knew to quit watching until next fall even if it was only March or April.

Re: Are TV Show season's getting too short?
 

But how do you know a holiday special was airing in its place? I'm sure that most shows took those weeks off (at least Christmas), and it couldn't have been wall-to-wall holiday specials every hour of those weeks.

Do you have evidence that those specific dates were pre-empted by holiday specials, or are you just assuming?

Re: Are TV Show season's getting too short?
 

I don't know what the hell you're talking about. I have never seen an episode of Laverne & Shirley. By 1977 I had been in the military for years and wasn't even in the country. I know perfectly well I stated 50s/60s in my post and when I was a child in the late 50s early 60s hour long shows usually had 32 episodes and half-hour shows even more. Plenty of shows for a NEW episode every week. It was absolutely routine to get a new show every week, the public expected it. On occasion a show might skip a week for a holiday or a network special but that was uncommon. And in any event...So what? Don't you expect a break for the holiday? The point here is this: When I sat down on Sunday night at 9PM I had every confidence was going to see a new episode of Bonanza and 99% of the time I did. This is one case where the "good old days" really were.

Now that I've said that, I cant imagine why anyone gives a shit. It's not like it will make any difference to bringing back longer seasons, good programming or reasonable schedules. I'm outta here.

Re: Are TV Show season's getting too short?
 

The problem is that you, rw2516, and TVWriter2B were ostensibly "agreeing" with each other, but were actually using different time frames, if stated at all.

The point is that the claim of "non-stop," which I think all three of you either made or quoted and agreed with was, at best, hyperbole. Even if the breaks were only on holidays, and I've given examples where at least some breaks were not limited to holidays, the point was that TV shows were rarely non-stop.

The longest season of Bonanza had 34 episodes, which meant that Bonanza was only ever new on a Sunday night 65% of the time.


Now, from the anecdotal evidence provided here of a select few shows, it does seem like shows in the 50s and 60s tended, though not consistently, to have longer seasons than now. For example, The Twilight Zone had a season high of 37 episodes, but also had a low of 18 episodes for season 4, where it was a mid-season replacement. So while breaks were less common, things like mid-season replacement, longer breaks between seasons, reruns, etc. were not unknown even then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._Zone_episodes

It's hard to say when exactly shows started having shorter seasons, on average, but the Laverne and Shirley example shows that even back in the 1970s, 24 episodes a season was not uncommon. Considering network fare averages probably 22 episodes a season nowadays, there hasn't been that dramatic a shortening of the season for the last 40 years.

Now, something not discussed is whether or not these longer seasons were necessarily a good thing. Rod Serling was famously drained of ideas by the long runs on The Twilight Zone:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twi...2.80.931962.29So, at least for creator-driven shows, shorter seasons may be better to let them tell their stories at a reasonable pace without exhausting them.

Also, unlike the network shows that still try to run fall through spring, a lot of the smaller cable shows do run non-stop, or close to, for each season. Networks have picked this up a bit, but only for serial shows. 24 almost always ran non-stop, sometimes with multiple episodes in a week.

I think another thing to consider is the declining importance of "appointment TV." In the 50s and 60s, people would have to schedule their lives around their favorite TV shows. You couldn't do anything else for most of the year on Sundays at 9, since that's when Bonanza aired. Networks had a more "captive" audience, so they delivered the goods.

As VCRs, video games, computers, the internet, etc. entered the arena, TV was no longer the only means of audio-visual entertainment in the home. Networks no longer had the audience that they did for shows like Bonanza. Less audience means less money, means smaller budgets, means less episodes. Networks could get away with airing more reruns during the year because a good portion of the audience probably had missed it the first time around ("it's new to you!").

Once DVRs, TV on DVD, on-demand, and internet streaming came into play, TV was no longer the only options for watching TV. Nowadays I don't even have to be home at the time the show airs in order to watch it. I don't even have to know what day of the week the show airs, or when its seasons start or end. My DVR will automatically record it for me. If it doesn't, I can catch up with on-demand or internet streaming. Or if I missed the first few seasons of it, I can catch up on DVD, and maybe just wait until the DVD of the current season so I can watch it in one batch.

Re: Are TV Show season's getting too short?
 

Actually the cable networks like TNT and USA seem to depend on the broadcast network hiatuses to air their new programming so that they can get viewers looking for something that's not a repeat.

Which goes hand-in-hand with the VCR entering the home.

But not only were those thing entering the home and creating a broader base for media distractiont but the sheer VOLUME of what is being broadcast these days is a factor. Back in the 70's you only had the big three networks, PBS and maybe an independent channel. The addition of FOX, CW and all those cable networks increased the amount of programming exponentially. Consider how many TV series were in production in the 80's compared to TODAY.

Re: Are TV Show season's getting too short?
 

Regarding The Fugitive. I was a kid at the time and didn't really watch that show. But I do remember that the catching of the one-armed man was really, really hyped. And people talked a lot about it and anticipated the finale. So maybe the late airing was a way to build the hype.

Re: Are TV Show season's getting too short?
 

Oh, I don't doubt it was heavily promoted. But that doesn't explain why it aired so long after the rest of the season.

Re: Are TV Show season's getting too short?
 

My guess, since we don't have access to the historical data to settle this debate, summer reruns began for The Fugitive and the 2-part finale aired at end of summer reruns, the following week the start of the fall season. Start the season early with a really big deal.

The western Guns of Will Sonnett ran two seasons. They had planned a third but got cancelled. One season three episode was filmed and aired at the end of the second season's summer reruns just before fall season began.

Re: Are TV Show season's getting too short?
 

Well, this appears to be the case.

IMDB's trivia page for the show states that a 5th season was planned, but that lead actor David Janssen declined, as he was tired of the show:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056757/trivia

This site says the same, but that Janssen's decision not to do a 5th season came in December, which gave them time to write and produce the finale by the end of March. So they could've aired at the end of the season, but the network held them back until August:
http://www.davidjanssen.net/EpGuide_TheFugitive.htm

This book probably has more definitive info:
http://www.amazon.com/Fugitive-Recap...dp/0938817345/

Re: Are TV Show season's getting too short?
 

I haven't read every word, but :thumbsup: to the research efforts in this thread