American culture

The lifecycle of U.S. television shows

Television production companies either commission teleplays for TV pilots or buy specs. Some of these scripts are turned into pilots. Those which the production company thinks might be commercially viable are then marketed to television networks—or television distributors for first-run syndication. (KingWorld distributes Oprah in first-run syndication, for example, because that show is syndicated—is not affiliated with a particular network.)

Networks sometimes preemptively purchase pilots to prevent other nets from controlling them, and the purchase of a pilot is no guarantee that a show will get an order for more episodes. Those that do get "picked up" get either a full or partial-season order, and the show goes into production, usually establishing itself with permanent sets, a full crew and production offices.

Writers are hired, directors are selected and work begins, usually during the late spring and summer before the fall season-series premieres. (Shows can also be mid-season replacements, meaning they are ordered specifically to fill holes in a network schedule created by the failure and cancellation of shows which premiered in the fall. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an example of a successful mid-season replacement.)

The standard broadcast television season in the United States is 22 episodes per season; sitcoms may have 24 or more; animated programs may have more (or fewer) episodes; cable networks with original programming seem to have settled on about 10 or 12 episodes per season, in line with much British television programming.

American soap operas air in the afternoon, five days a week, without any significant break in taping and airing schedules throughout the year. This means that, more or less, these serials air approximately 260 episodes a year. These shows are rarely, if ever, repeated, making it difficult for viewers to "catch up" when they miss a month, or even a week, of programming.

Networks use profits from commercials run during the show to pay the production company, which in turn pays the cast and crew, and keeps a share of the profits for itself. (Networks sometimes act as both production companies and distributors.)

As advertising rates are based on the size of the audience, measuring the number of people watching a network is very important. This measurement is known as a show or network's ratings. Sweeps months are important landmarks in the television year—ratings earned during these periods determining advertising rates until the next sweeps period, therefore shows often have their most exciting plot developments happen during sweeps.

Shows that are successful with audiences and advertisers receive authorization from the network to continue production. Those that are not successful are often quickly told to discontinue production by the network, known as cancellation There are instances of initially low-rated shows surviving cancellation and later becoming highly-popular, but these are rare. For the most part, shows that are not immediately even moderately successful will be canceled by the end of November sweeps.

Most hour-long TV dramas are shot over eight days, most sitcoms in three to six hours once every eight days (as opposed to soap operas, described earlier in this section, which tape one or sometimes two hour-long episodes each weekday). A show generally produces enough programming to fill five or six months of weekly programming, the rest of the slots are filled with reruns.

Generally, any particular episode is eligible for two repeats before it becomes dramatically more expensive for a network to re-air it. If a show becomes a hit, after 100 episodes it becomes "eligible" for syndication. However that even before cable, that did not always apply. For instance, Star Trek's 79 episodes and The Honeymooners original 39 were considered sufficient for syndication for decades, and in recent years Disney has limited all shows, even hits, to 65 episodes.

With the rise of cable nets, the resulting need for programming has lowered that benchmark for shows that are believed to have very reliable audiences. When a TV show originally produced by one network is rerun by another it is known as off-network syndication.

It is also becoming increasingly common for shows to be released as DVD box sets, which is highly profitable for production companies, as they have usually already recouped their production costs with payments from network buyers.

If a show is highly successful the producers might pitch the network on a spinoff or a franchise. A spinoff is a new show with a different premise but one or more familiar characters taken from the parent show. (Frasier is a spinoff of Cheers based on Kelsey Grammer's character of Frasier Crane.) A franchise is a new show with the same or only slightly amended premise, but with a vastly different cast and/or perhaps a different location. (The Law & Order and Star Trek shows are examples of series franchises.)