[opendtv] TV's Bold New Concept: Summer

TV's Bold New Concept: Summer

By SCOTT ROBSON
May 23, 2004

PRIME-TIME television viewers are willing to put up with a lot. 
Reality staged and edited for their benefit? Not a problem. Live 
events beamed onto their flat screens with a five-second delay? Fine. 
And for decades, they were even O.K. with a "year" that started in 
September and lasted for only 35 weeks. While the networks stuck to 
this Procrustean calendar, viewers struggled to digest a flood of 
100-plus new and returning shows each fall (and a few more each 
winter, to replace the fall offerings that died young), then nursed a 
trickle of reruns and also-rans each summer.

In recent years, the summertime introduction of new reality shows has 
helped with the feast-or-famine problem, but only slightly. This 
summer, however, two of the major networks are drastically reordering 
their calendar years, and others may follow. Fox, the youngest of the 
major networks and a continual thorn in the side of the original Big 
Three, is leading the charge. Instead of launching its new slate in 
the fall, Fox will open its television season on June 8, after which 
it will shift its programming to a year-round format. The network - 
no stranger to hyperbole - calls the decision to start new and 
returning series throughout the year the beginning of a TV revolution.

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/arts/television/23ROBS.html

 
 
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