Mid season finales....

[Radbot42]

Why oh why do we have these. I hate having 2-4 or more weeks without my shows in the middle of their seasons. I get having to wait between seasons (I still hate it but understand) but why do they all have mid season finales? I think they think we won't be watching because of the holidays, but all the kids are home for the holidays ( they will be watching), families who like the same shows might want to watch them together (mine). I also get a very needed helping of comedy and laughs from much of my shows.

And I know what everyone is going to say. Do something else. I can and do, but I like my catching up with my shows at night with friends or family, and we all hate these weeks.

[MakeDigitalLove]

I have no idea why they do these, but I have a huge dislike for this and it keeps me from catching up with shows. For me it got worse not only when they started to take these long breaks but when they started to call them "finales."

The majority of the time I just wait for shows to show up on Netflix or other services before watching it at all.

[Hardheaded1]

It is very annoying. I don't watch any of the shows you refer to, but I do enjoy PBS and some regular shows there.

The stations are such sanctimonious hypocrites. They preach endlessly about being commercial-free as if it somehow exempts them from the financial pressures of how to ethically deal with having sponsors. When's the last time you saw a big expose on the abuses of the oil industry sponsored by BP or Exxon? Anyway, I digress.

They in fact do have commercials and they are the worst of the worst. They call them beg-a-thons, and they hijack programming for 2-3 weeks at a time about four times a year. During their beg-a-thons, normal programming is held ransom until they get through spamming the air waves with badly-argued appeals for cash, badly chosen musical filler and old shows from five or more decades ago, or some new-age philosophical pseudo-religion or financial guru shit.

During the blackouts, only the news gets through and regular programs are withheld as if they were cocaine or sex or whatever is the desired treat. It's low behavior, and it is made worse by coming from all these smug folks who claim their pedestals are above the hoi polloi of base commerce.

Rant over.

[East]

I hate them too but you can actually expect more of them as time goes along...cable is even getting on board...

The problem is...the advertisers won't pay top dollar for ad space during certain times of the year due to traditional patterns of low viewership and since they are the driving force behind all of TV (and now the internet)...they call the shots....

The relatively recent "Mid Season Finales" is an attempt to grab higher ratings which in turn grab higher advertising revenue

In the end it is a numbers game. It may change one day if they can find a system that is more efficient than the Neilson Ratings which is the industry standard ...and a very poor one.

What I don't get...you have ratings juggernauts like The Walking Dead and they only have 16 episode orders.....

Of course...that is better than 10 episodes but still...it is an interesting study and fun strategy to second guess as it has the unique position of grabbing most every demo AND grabbing the viewers as well...usually it is one or the other and even with the demo they manage to get across the board demos (a win in every group) which is damn near impossible. I suspect that they will be used as a model in many ways ...simply because what they are doing ...works.