Pop Culture Curmudgeon

Mid-season Hiatuses Suck

It’s been only two weeks since new episodes of Supernatural ran, and already I miss it.

The mid-season hiatus of Chuck begins after the December 15 episode, and they will be running a horrible new reality series in its place. Same story for Heroes.

Back in the day, we used to complain about all of the reruns of our favorite shows. So the networks began airing shows as blocks of uninterrupted new episodes, stretching out hiatuses to ensure that the show ran over the full television season. And now we complain that we have to wait six weeks to see new episodes of our favorite shows.

I guess nothing makes us happy, but I can think of something that might make us complain less, at least until my vision of a networkless future comes to fruition. Single season blocks of 24 consecutive episodes. When one show ends, run a second show in that time slot for another block of consecutive episodes. 22-24 episodes would easily get you through half the year, while still allowing for occasional preemptions for events like the Super Bowl, NBA finals, World Series, Oscars, Grammys, and so on. And, you could swap time slots and repeat a show’s season to help attract new viewers.