Why did the season run into June?

[DeepSpaceWine]

One thing that has been bugging me about TNG and DS9 is the fact that usually the last 2 episodes of the season, including the usually highly-anticipated season finale, have debuted in June.

This is the case for TNG with Seasons 3, 4, 5, 6, and also for Season 2 (though the writer's strike extended the season into July after starting 2 months late) and DS9 with Seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and I think 7 too depending on the schedule of the local station.

Normally, tv seasons end in May. They used to end whenever the show ran out of episodes, which was usually sometime between March and July, but with shrinking season sizes over the '60s, it pulled it into March to May. By the late '80s, May as season finale month/sweeps month was already in place.

Nowadays, new episodes debut year-round (well, maybe not anymore in late December/very early January), and cable series commonly air in the summer months, but back in the '90s when all these Star Trek seasons aired, the only episodes that aired between June and August were cancelled series episodes being burned off or an occasional rare stray episode that never aired for whatever reason. Regular June episodes season after season was odd. Voyager & Enterprise aired on networks and they always wrapped up in May. Airing episodes in June seemed counter-logical as most in television avoided new programming in the summer months because of lower ratings because people were more likely to be doing things outside (well, that was the rationale), so airing episodes, including the season finale, in June seemed odd.

I was wondering, did anyone know why all syndicated Star Trek productions aired new episodes into June?

 

[Snaploud]

I think you've basically answered your own question. TNG and DS9 first-run episodes were syndicated and therefore relied upon different standards and practices than non-syndicated first-run shows. I wouldn't be surprised if you saw a lot of syndicated programs during that era ending seasons in a month other than May.

 

[Finn]

^Yeah, and I'm not sure why it bugged the OP. I never cared when a series finale was. I always took it as a schedule that they just happened to use for TNG and DS9, nothing more.

 

[Christopher]

Well, basically, they had 26 episodes per season, which is half a year's worth, but they typically interspersed 13 reruns during the season, stretching it to 39 weeks. So that's pretty much late September to early June.

Part of the reason the seasons were stretched out that long was because of the production time. These were complicated shows to make. I think the shooting schedule was 8 days per episode, and that's not counting the day off every Sunday, so in practice it was more like 9-10 days per episode. And the post-production time could last who knows how long depending on the complexity of the effects.

 

[DeepSpaceWine]

Actually.... no. June finishes are not common for syndication.

Xena's seasons wrapped up in May, so did Hercules with few exceptions. Xena's 1st season had 1 June episode ("Death Mask") and 1 late July/early Aug episode ("Is There a Doctor in the House?"). The traditional finale, "Callisto", aired in May. Then the series finale (Season 6) aired in June, but every other season was Sept/Oct-May. Hercules, besides Season 6 (half-season), Seasons 1, 3, 4, 5 all ended in May. Season 2 had one clip show air in late June ("The Cave of Echoes"). Whatever ep you would consider the proper finale, "The Wedding of Alcmene" or "Centaur Mentor Journey", aired in May. Ok, that covers Renaissance Pictures or whatever they were called.

Earth: Final Conflict wrapped up in May, though Season 1 had 1 stray episode air in late July/early Aug ("Infection"). Andromeda finished in May for all seasons. That covers the Atlantis Gene Roddenberry shows.

Ok, how about other syndicated shows? Adventures of Sinbad- May (2 seasons), Baywatch- May (10 syndicated seasons), Highlander- May (5 seasons. 1 season finished on June 3rd), V.I.P.- May (4 seasons), Viper- May (3 seasons), Renegade- May (3 seasons) & April (2 seasons). I don't think I need to provide more examples as all the series I listed here made up the vast majority of the syndicated series seasons airing from 1990 to the early '00s. Look at epguides.com for episode airdates or Wikipedia and find a list of first-run syndicated shows. Sept or Oct through May is the common format. Star Trek was the outlier.

My question still stands.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That said, I wondered why they couldn't just shift their production season, come back a little early from 1 spring/summer break to start filming like 2 weeks early so the season would wrap up in May. Look at Voyager, they had 26 episode seasons and finished by May (so did Seasons 1-2 of Enterprise).

And thanks Christopher for giving a possible answer. I was wondering if one of the TNG or DS9 DVDs answered it. I wondered about post-production for the season finale, but hesitated to think that was the case because of the penultimate episode for those seasons also airing, many not really known for post-production work (Body Parts, In the Cards, The Sound of Her Voice [a bottle show that comes off like a radio script], Tribunal, Facets. TNG's In Theory, Timescape, Transfigurations had some special effects, though I'm not sure if they were more than the average episode). Then, Hercules, Xena, Earth Final Conflict, Andromeda also had some graphics-intensive season finales (I recall "Atlantis" having some big effects for the show, "Reunions" had a few major battles with gods, same with "Motherhood". "Sacrifice II" had some too. EFC & Andromeda finales were graphics intensive), so what was Star Trek doing that they weren't? Voyager, as stated, was able to finish their season finales by mid-May. They started filming seasons in late June if I remember correctly (and I think they finished filming in early or mid March). I never really heard when TNG, DS9 started their seasons.

I agree, it may be a 26 episode season, +4 episodes over most of those, +2 over some, though 26 eps was not unusual in the early '90s, but was by the late '90s. Basically, I have a few ideas why it might be June (special effects, long seasons), but nothing for certain and was wondering if someone had heard some official word somewhere on the question or had enough technical expertise about the production or scheduling process to know the why behind it.

 

[Christopher]

^Well, I think you're onto something there with the episode numbers. When TNG started, 26-episode seasons were pretty common, but the Trek shows kept doing 26-episode seasons long after most shows, including the other syndicated shows you name, had dropped to 22 per year. So if TNG and DS9 had seasons that were four episodes longer than typical, that would explain them ending a month later than typical.

 

[SpyOne]

I suspect that TNG was just at the forefront of a trend.

As I recall, in the late 70s and early 80s, all shows generally ended at the same time. Each show ran for roughly 26 weeks (minus special events that pre-empted it and christmas specials), then re-ran the entire season from May to September. This was very handy for people who were watching some other show during the regular season, as you could watch the show you missed in its entirety. NBC even made a slogan for this phenomenon: "If you haven't seen it, then it's new to you."

At some point, someone realized that you could lure viewers away from other shows (or back from other shows) if you were running brand-new episodes when they were showing re-runs. I suspect this was related to the prevalence of the VCR: you might tape one show and watch the other, but you'd be more likely to actually watch the one that wasn't a rerun, and so you'd watch the commercials too (and we all know that the only viewers that really matter are the ones that watch the commercials, because those are the viewers you get paid for).
Thus began a tradition of debuting the new season right after Labor Day (early September), then showing a few reruns. And the related tradition of sprinkling a few reruns during the season, but doing the season finale in June. Both were simple marketing ploys to lure viewers away from other shows, who would be showing reruns at that time.
And, like many things in games theory, this strategy is only an advantage if you are the only one doing it, but you are at a disadvantage if you are the only one not doing it, so everybody does it. Much like Coke and Pepsi could save a bundle of money if they just stopped advertising (on the theory that their ads basically cancel each other out and maintain the status quo), but only if they both agreed to do it.

 

[MrJimbo]

It must be a real annoyance since it has been over a decade since this has happened to TNG or DS9.

 

[Kirk1980]

1987 was still part of the era when most TV schedules were basically geared right to the school schedule. September to June. That's why TV Guide would have Fall Preview issues. It's just the way the industry was at the time. I kinda liked it. You knew when new episodes would start, you knew when they would end. None of this start and stop crap we get now with gaps in between new episodes stretching months on end.

 

[Hober Mallow]

The Trek shows normally premiered in late September, sometimes even early October, and so the season would usually last until June. I'm still not seeing why that's such a huge annoyance. "Damnit, it's almost June and the season isn't over yet! I'm so pissed that there are still new episodes coming!"

 

[DeepSpaceWine]

I was never annoyed. I actually liked it because from late May through September, usually it was just a sea of reruns. Cable only started producing a volume of programming which usually ran in the summer (and then resumed like January-March) by 2000. Prior to cable getting first-run programming, outside from summer burnoff of cancelled shows' episodes, the occasional stray episode that was never aired for whatever reason until reruns, Star Trek's 2 June episodes were all there was and that was excellent.

One episode was always hit or miss (hit: The Inner Light, Timescape, Duet, Tribunal, miss: Transfigurations, In Theory, The Sound of Her Voice, somewhere inbetween: Facets, Body Parts, In the Cards), but the season finale, with its cliffhanger (DS9's were usually more open-ended, like The Adversary, Broken Link, Call to Arms), it was always a suspenseful, action-packed episode that left you hanging. One advantage of airing in June was there was no competition, no other series you're following to distract or draw some of your attention away like there is with May finales. I particularly remember the DS9 season 3-5 finales; those were really enjoyable. Season 6 was kind of ehhh, particularly as Dax's "death" was obvious months in advance from her re-signing dispute (probably her wanting to break her contract to do something else, like maybe she had the inside track for getting that spot on Becker), though the ending with Sisko there was pretty cool and totally out of left field.

I only asked the question out of curiosity as to why Star Trek was anomalous relative to other broadcast & syndicated shows in its day. June was actually really good for the finale for shortening the season of reruns (and less competition) and the fact that school was out, so there was no more homework or grades to worry about.

- - - - - - - - -
Here's a question, for all of you who watched TNG & DS9 in their original run (or at least part of the 1990-1998 set of seasons), what did you think of the idea of having June episodes (especially having the season finales in June)?

And, I'll expand the original question. What did you think of the June episodes quality-wise compared to the episodes that aired during the mainstream months?

Just a quick reminder for those of foggy memories so they don't have to go to Memory Alpha, Wikipedia, or epguides.com, the June episodes:
TNG
S-3: Transfigurations, The Best of Both Worlds
S-4: In Theory, Redemption
S-5: The Inner Light, Time's Arrow
S-6: Timescape, Descent

DS9
S-1: Duet, In the Hands of the Prophets
S-2: Tribunal, The Jem'Hadar
S-3: Facets, The Adversary
S-4: Body Parts, Broken Link
S-5: In the Cards, Call to Arms
S-6: The Sound of Her Voice, Tears of the Prophets

 

[Christopher]

Here's a question, for all of you who watched TNG & DS9 in their original run (or at least part of the 1990-1998 set of seasons), what did you think of the idea of having June episodes (especially having the season finales in June)?

I never gave it any thought. It never really seemed to me that there was anything anomalous or noteworthy about the calendar month in which its seasons ended.

And, I'll expand the original question. What did you think of the June episodes quality-wise compared to the episodes that aired during the mainstream months?

I don't see that there's a meaningful dividing line to draw there, since the episodes would've been written up to three months earlier and produced 1-2 months earlier, with their production overlapping with multiple other earlier episodes. (I read once that a typical TNG production schedule from story outline to aired episode was 11 weeks, and they had to start a new one every 8-10 days. So any given episode's production process would've overlapped with around a third of the season's other episodes.) As far as the production was concerned, they weren't a separate entity from what came before; they were just part of the home stretch.

TNG
S-3: Transfigurations, The Best of Both Worlds
S-4: In Theory, Redemption
S-5: The Inner Light, Time's Arrow
S-6: Timescape, Descent

"The Inner Light" is easily the best of those, BoBW probably second. Most of the others were fine, though I was lukewarm on "Descent," I think, and "Redemption" was brought down by its silly Sela subplot (a silly idea, and Denise Crosby looked awful in that Romulan wig).

DS9
S-1: Duet, In the Hands of the Prophets
S-2: Tribunal, The Jem'Hadar
S-3: Facets, The Adversary
S-4: Body Parts, Broken Link
S-5: In the Cards, Call to Arms
S-6: The Sound of Her Voice, Tears of the Prophets

Those are all pretty strong, but "Duet" and "In the Cards" lead the pack.