It's that time of year when I get pissed off with American TV.
Every few months they have what is called "Sweeps Periods", which is a month or so when they measure ratings. When they have the ratings for that month, they can then set rates for advertisers for the next period. There's 3, I think, 'Sweeps' periods in a TV year.
Shows all start in the Fall...... nights are cooler, people are coming in from the cold and sitting infront of the goggle box instead of having a social life. Major networks constantly promote their new and returning shows and you start to watch a few things. Then they measure the ratings. Then suddenly the shows disappear. And you get repeats. Then they start advertising them again, and lo and behold as the next Sweeps period approaches the new shows return from the abyss.
It makes a programme very hard to follow and a storyline very hard to remember if you're constantly having several weeks break between episodes. But hey, we're only the viewers, what do we count.
The UK sensibly waits until it has enough episodes to show CONSECUTIVELY (there's a novel idea) which means you get uninterrupted viewing for the span of the show.
Posted by katie at November 9, 2004 02:29 PMAh well, you have several hundred channels to watch so you can always look for something else if you run across a rerun. Of course, most of the other things on the tube are also reruns but somewhere in there, there might be one you haven't seen before :-)
Posted by: Steve at November 10, 2004 09:42 AM