Network Scheduling and Sweeps

Alternatively: Where Have All My Shows Gone?

I’ll admit to being a little bit confused last week when I went to watch some of my shows, only to find out that they were pretty much all in reruns. But apparently it became March at some point, and, as is wont to happen, a lot of network shows disappeared off the face of the earth. And since I wasn’t paying attention to the calendar, this caught me by surprise.

I’ll lament the demise of the rerun at some later point; right now I want to talk about scheduling. Network schedules have remained relatively unchanged for a while, and they’re pretty predictable. Shows premiere in late September/early October. There’s a hiatus for most of December and January, but they’re sure to pick up again by February at the latest. New shows through February, then March everything drops off. Sometime in April shows start up again, leading to May, during which there are much-hyped finales.

Three months in there are considered “sweeps” months: November, February, and May. The networks are paying extra attention in those times to how many people are watching their shows, and these are the times when you’ll most often see ratings stunts: special guest stars, bloated episodes, the return to big plot points or the teasing of an audience-favorite coupling. They’re also your “wedding and baby” episodes—basically, the networks really want to make sure you’re watching. It’s when Nielsen is paying a lot of attention.

Which is not to say they don’t care about the other times, but… well, they don’t care about the other times. As much, anyway. A lot of it is simply math. The average season has 22 episodes (maybe 23 or 24, mostly for sitcoms). The three sweeps months each require four new episodes, so that’s 12 already gone. That leaves 10 episodes to be spread over the rest of the months—and you’ve got to have five or six to get from your premiere to November sweeps. So there are maybe 5 to put elsewhere—maybe one for a holiday episode in December, and a few in April to lead up to the May finales. All of this pretty much leaves March out in the cold.

Granted, that was a pretty vague example, and, as always, sometimes networks will mess with the formula. The Event, after all, has just come back from an extended hiatus in the beginning of March. (Though this is perhaps not the best example, as a lot of people believe this is because of the network’s lack of faith in it.) And a lot of times the end of March will pick up, because they don’t want to leave you hanging for too long.

Cable networks have often taken advantage of network hiatuses to air their own shows, so they don’t follow this pattern. And networks will sometimes have their own reasons to air shows off of the typical time blocks, and can really pick and choose where they want to air the episodes not designated for sweeps. It's not an exact science.

But in about a month and a half, I do expect to start seeing some weddings and babies.