Don't need to be a weatherman

[womzilla]

One of the shows that convinced me that I wanted to start watching live-action TV again (after a self-imposed moritorium which lasted most of the 1990s) was 24, the reasonably clever, often very stylish, and frequently exciting action-adventure-movie-as-TV series which is now in its third season.

A problem facing modern television is that an annual season is generally fewer than 23 episodes, which means that more than half the year, a show is in reruns. (That's for broadcast seasons. Cable shows are even worse.) This is bad for the viewers of most shows, because it means that new episodes are concentrated at the start of the season (for the Sept/Oct launch) and for sweeps in November, February, and May. In December, January, March, and April, you get a lot of reruns interspersed with the new episodes. Fox has decided that because of its serial nature, 24 doesn't get reruns, which means it just plain disappears from the air for weeks at a time.

This time, the break is the entire month of March. (Well, not quite--there will be a new episode on March 30, five weeks after the last new episode.)

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Fox is happy to see 24 disappear. I won't mourn it--this season is good, and it would be better for it to end before Jack sees a leprechaun. But it's just so, so, Fox to let it to whimper to an end with a month-long gap in the middle for no reason other than it's not sweeps month.

Comments

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

Made worse by the fact that they a plugging in some lame-o reality series in its place (now, don't get me wrong, I actually LIKE "The Surreal Life",there is something cathartic about Tammy- Faye Messner and Ron Jeremy exchanging hugs it makes you feel there is hope for the world after all)but 95% of "reality television" frankly sucks.