I hate these BREAKS!!!

[RobertScorpio]

Fastfoward...GONE until March??? V, yeah, they said so at the start, but FastFoward??? C'mon!!!

But, not to worry. 24 and Lost are about to return, but geee....I hate these breaks!! was it like this in the 70s and 80s?

Rob

 

[Top41]

Yeah, I gotta say, I was kind of bummed when I saw Flashforward wouldn't be back until March! The same is true of another fav of mine, Gossip Girl.

I think a lot of it is the Olympics. Maybe it's just me, but I have zero interest in the Olympics.

It'll be nice to have Lost and 24 back, though!

 

[John Picard]

Wah. LOST finished in May and won't return until the first part of February.

 

[Neeka Keet]

I'm happy to wait for Lost if it means that I don't have to deal with annoying two or three week interruptions of my season. That was really annoying to me, specially with nature of the plot.

 

[Warp Coil]

I'm honestly not watching TV much these days anymore because I'm tired of figuring out when a new episode is airing. The schedule is just too irratic. DVD is the way to go.

 

[Captain Craig]

Not only do the breaks kill my desire for watching first run TV but so does watching a show on DVD then watching it first run after you've caught up. Commercials are then twice as annoying as before-even zapping through them.

The double edge sword some would say is that if you don't watch first run the stuff you like gets cancelled. Well to that I say as a sci-fi fan 90% of the stuff I like gets canned regardless so that edge of the sword is dulled and rendered useless. I could make a list of shows I watched that got canned regardless and it'd match most of you guys list.

TV on DVD a blessing to viewers but an unknown curse to live TV?? I think so at lest.

 

[Starbreaker]

Well, what I watch has no bearing on what gets canceled, and that's probably true of 99.99%.

I think the breaks in FlashForward and V are really going to hurt the shows. For shows like Glee, it will probably be good, especially with the half-season DVD set.

 

[StarshipDefiant]

Not only do the breaks kill my desire for watching first run TV but so does watching a show on DVD then watching it first run after you've caught up. Commercials are then twice as annoying as before-even zapping through them.

The double edge sword some would say is that if you don't watch first run the stuff you like gets cancelled. Well to that I say as a sci-fi fan 90% of the stuff I like gets canned regardless so that edge of the sword is dulled and rendered useless. I could make a list of shows I watched that got canned regardless and it'd match most of you guys list.

TV on DVD a blessing to viewers but an unknown curse to live TV?? I think so at lest.

Reality shows, sports programing, preempting and extended breaks sure don't help none, either. It's one of the reasons I am upset about Dollhouse being canceled, Fox pretty much went out of their way to ensure viewership wouldn't be able to be consistent, but whatever. A good part of these breaks for some shows, is indeed the upcoming Olympics, can't blame them for not trying to compete with that (we'd probably see many, many a sho get canceled because of that). The same can be said for the holiday season, don't really want to compete with the specials, but with that said...from November/December to March? That is a bit much, and people wonder why the audience doesn't stick with the shows anymore. Why? It's not consistent with it's air dates and time.

 

[pookha]

the networks used to be smart/
they used to know that even though reruns didnt get as many viewers they often were bringing in new viewers.
but now not only do you have long breaks some shows dont even have reruns in their slots.

and yeah long breaks can just kill some of these dense plotted shows.

 

[Trekker4747]

Fastfoward...GONE until March??? V, yeah, they said so at the start, but FastFoward??? C'mon!!!

But, not to worry. 24 and Lost are about to return, but geee....I hate these breaks!! was it like this in the 70s and 80s?

Rob

Breaks this time of year are common, without them the TV season would end in February. They only have 20-some episodes to air over the course of like 36 weeks. This time of year more people are with family/doing the holiday thing and over the summer more people are traveling/outside. So these breaks are nedded to pad-out the season.

Next year is mixed up a bit due to the Olympics -which is hard to compete with.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I need breaks like this. I was getting nowhere with my Netflix queue because my DVR was taking up all my free time. Tons of watchable movies being released soon: Into the Storm, The Baader Meinhof Complex, Beautiful Losers, Public Enemies, The World's Greatest Dad, The Cove, The Hangover, Inglorious Basterds, 500 Days of Summer, District 9 and season three of The Tudors.

 

[Aragorn]

I really don't see what the big deal is. It's just television. Are people thrown for a loss as to what they should do when they're suddenly free between 9-10 p.m.?

I hope no one here complains to your local network when a natural disaster or national tragedy preempts your soap operas.

 

[Kelso]

I've lost interest in everything. The only shows that remotely interest me anymore are Mad Men, Lost, and Doctor Who... and I don't mind waiting for those.

How I long for the days of Heroes (when it was good), Boston Legal, Pushing Daisies, and BSG.

 

[RobertScorpio]

I've lost interest in everything. The only shows that remotely interest me anymore are Mad Men, Lost, and Doctor Who... and I don't mind waiting for those.

How I long for the days of Heroes (when it was good), Boston Legal, Pushing Daisies, and BSG.

I soooo miss Boston Legal and all the 'star trek' inuendo it had for us each week. Guest stars, shatner, Odo at times...was a great show too on its own merits!!!

Rob

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

In the 70's & 80's, they ran all 26 (or so) episodes in one long run, with the only breaks for some special programming ("pre-empted" was the one thing I hated to hear in those days).

Those interruptions could have been anything from breaking news reports, to presidential addresses, to some kind of scheduled special.

Then you'd have 26 (or so) weeks of reruns, which without TiVo or even VCR's, you could watch your second favorite show during the summer.

ST-TNG was the first show I remember doing it any other way, but I wasn't watching a lot of TV around 1987, so it probably wasn't the first.

 

[RobertScorpio]

In the 70's & 80's, they ran all 26 (or so) episodes in one long run, with the only breaks for some special programming ("pre-empted" was the one thing I hated to hear in those days).

Those interruptions could have been anything from breaking news reports, to presidential addresses, to some kind of scheduled special.

Then you'd have 26 (or so) weeks of reruns, which without TiVo or even VCR's, you could watch your second favorite show during the summer.

ST-TNG was the first show I remember doing it any other way, but I wasn't watching a lot of TV around 1987, so it probably wasn't the first.

i still remember TNG's fourth season...eight new episodes started it out..then they repeated all eight episodes..then three here..four there..two here and so on..rest of the way

Rob

 

[Nowhere Man]

The breaks don't bother me unless it's South Park, it always seems like there's so much time inbetween episodes. I also hate when Family Guy and the Simpsons is interupted by football and baseball. I'm actually looking foward to the olympics, I love the winter olympics, not so much the summer. Another thing that's good about the breaks is usually discovery and history will have new episodes of dirty jobs and other shows. It used to be Reno 911's time to return, but that wong be hapening.

 

[Jax]

ABC are making huge mistakes with the breaks for V and FF though FOX is doing the same with Glee so not clever either for them but Glee will probably have Idol to back it up on return. FlashForward looks dead to me with ratings slipping and several series low's in a row...at the best FF will get a short 2nd season pick up and be canned by midseason 2011. V has the better chance due to a more stable audience and critical reception.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

In the 70's & 80's, they ran all 26 (or so) episodes in one long run, with the only breaks for some special programming ("pre-empted" was the one thing I hated to hear in those days).

Those interruptions could have been anything from breaking news reports, to presidential addresses, to some kind of scheduled special.

Then you'd have 26 (or so) weeks of reruns, which without TiVo or even VCR's, you could watch your second favorite show during the summer.

ST-TNG was the first show I remember doing it any other way, but I wasn't watching a lot of TV around 1987, so it probably wasn't the first.

i still remember TNG's fourth season...eight new episodes started it out..then they repeated all eight episodes..then three here..four there..two here and so on..rest of the way

Rob

I wonder if TNG was done differently by each channel since it was basically straight to syndication. I can't remember how any given season was aired here in Chicagoland, just that it was my earliest memory of the "split season".

 

[Trekker4747]

In the 70's & 80's, they ran all 26 (or so) episodes in one long run, with the only breaks for some special programming ("pre-empted" was the one thing I hated to hear in those days).

Those interruptions could have been anything from breaking news reports, to presidential addresses, to some kind of scheduled special.

Then you'd have 26 (or so) weeks of reruns, which without TiVo or even VCR's, you could watch your second favorite show during the summer.

ST-TNG was the first show I remember doing it any other way, but I wasn't watching a lot of TV around 1987, so it probably wasn't the first.

i still remember TNG's fourth season...eight new episodes started it out..then they repeated all eight episodes..then three here..four there..two here and so on..rest of the way

Rob

I wonder if TNG was done differently by each channel since it was basically straight to syndication. I can't remember how any given season was aired here in Chicagoland, just that it was my earliest memory of the "split season".

Under the syndication terms for first-run whent he station gets the episode they must air it sometime within the week they get it.