Current Events > CE is obsessed with TV, right? Explain this to me.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Why is it modern practice (sometimes) to split a season into 2 parts? Apart from the fact this is very annoying, but I don't understand why they do it. If a season is only 12 episodes, why split it into 2 pathetic 6 episode season parts? Is there a reason for this practice, why has become quite common the last 8 or 10 years?
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marketing

you get 2 season premieres and 2 season finales
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Philoktetes posted...

marketing

you get 2 season premieres and 2 season finales

This. Gets you more views, also why it's become increasingly common to do that while having every other episode take two weeks to come out instead of one.
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I wonder if it started during the writers strike. When was that? 2004 or something?
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It was first done on a wide scale basis in the US with Syfy and Stargate/Battlestar Galactica as the seasons not only took a long while because of complications, but also because winter and summer seasons gave them less competition against other networks.

It worked and everybody started jumping on it.
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Sweeps weeks.
For regular shows (non-summer shows) there are sweeps weeks sometime in November and February. I think originally it was 1 week but now it is basically a month. They are when Nielsen sends out the diaries to people in far greater number than those they send the boxes to. Those weeks are basically what determines ad revenue for the next year for the show/network.

So they have build up episodes, arcs, finales, special guests, and shark jumping during sweeps. So it gives a chance to make both Nov. and Feb. sweeps feel like special can't miss events, which helps with advertising (at least when you are the only one doing it, now I think they are just afraid of not doing it).
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