TVLine Reports: Is the Split Season Working?

[RumplesGirl]

Back in August, ABC announced its ambitious plan to unspool three of its dramas — Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and Once Upon a Time — with “non-stop” split runs during the 2-13-14 TV season. With Shonda Rhimes’ one-two punch returning tonight, and Once following on March 9, TVLine took stock of how this scheduling effort is affecting the ratings, for (hopefully) the better.

The “problem” the split-season plan sought to solve was one of frustrating preemptions throughout the season. Once Upon a Time, for example, was bumped or ran repeats six times during the back half of its sophomore run alone.

As Once cocreator Eddy Kitsis previously told TVLine, “Adam [Horowitz] and I, on our behalf, lobbied for” the 11-and-11 scheduling of episodes, “because we felt that last year it hurt momentum when they kept changing the scheduling.” With a nod to his and Horowitz’s previous TV home, he adds, “Lost was the same way. Our show needs to run continuous.”

Although, as the charts below indicate, Once‘s own “non-stop” scheduling hasn’t delivered any significant upside yet (compared to the first 11 episodes of Season 2), creatively the EPs only saw a win, being able to treat the season-opening Neverland arc as “one giant movie.”

One undeniable downside to ABC’s split-season plan is the difficulty experienced in filling the months-long winter hiatus with even remotely comparable fare. (For example, the Scandal-replacing Assets got yanked after two low-rated airings.) One week after pulling the plug on the period spy drama, ABC boss Paul Lee maintained that the extended winter hiatus offers “the chance to try some really interesting pieces of programming … in-season rather than doing it in the summer. So those particular experiments are ones we’re glad we’ve done.”

http://tvline.com/2014/02/27/ratings-greys-anatomy-scandal-once-upon-a-time-split-seasons/#!11/ratings-oncewdvr/

[RumplesGirl]

RG’s two cents (for what it’s worth)

There are two different perspective to consider. The writing one and the internet culture/fan one.

1) Writing: from a writing perspective I think the split season is better. Each 11 had one giant arc meaning that there is less filler–we haven’t any episode the likes of Tiny, In the Name of the Brother, ect. Some episodes are less successful than others but that’s a subjective criticism. On the whole I think they’ve stayed with the main cast and not gone off wildly on tangents for lesser characters about whom I simply don’t care.

2) Fan: from a fan perspective, I loathe this hiatus with every fiber of my being. I want my show. I want my fandom to stop yelling at each other. I want to  flipping watch the episodes already. I want discussion and not theory. I want to stop tracking each tiny individual movement of actors and just watch an hour of TV

But I don’t expect TV execs with dollar sings in their eyes to understand and/or care about the internet culture fandom. We’re not their bread and butter. Of the 6-9 million who watch ONCE every week, the internet culture isn’t the largest slice of the pie. They have to consider the audience as a whole. And this is an audience who is slowly being trained to accept these larger breaks. This is an audience who watches Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Mad Men, Sherlock, Downton Abbey, ect. In other words, an audience that is used to long breaks in between season halves.

So. Do I want this trend to continue? Yes. But I want ABC to re-tool how they approach it. Air reruns. Air specials. DO SOMETHING to remind your audience that the show is coming back.

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

[HappyEndings]

I don’t like the split season this is what happened to another show and I forget to watch it because I never new when it came on or something else was better. We could of had about 3 episodes by now like the Black List did to keep the viewers attention.

The ratings has dropped because of that NL story that got old real quick in my opinion plus they have so many plot holes it is getting so ridicules. Perhaps they could have filled us in between the split season with all the missing story line and maybe more people would come back to Once. Or did reruns on Season 3 so people could remember what happened anything but this break. I will be surprise if they do make it to Season 4.

[RumplesGirl]

@HappyEndings you make some good points, and some points I’d like to address

We could of had about 3 episodes by now like the Black List did to keep the viewers attention.

The biggest issue with coming back earlier was the Olympics. Even if over all the Olympics were down for the Winter 2014 games, they still bring in like 28 million people every single night. You don’t go up against them and come out alive. In fact many TV networks aired new episodes of shows they want to “burn off”–meaning the aired new episodes of shows that don’t stand a chance for renewal, so might as well kill them during the Olympics. (ex: CBS’s Intelligence)

Also, if we had come back sooner, we’d be off the air again sooner as well, waiting over the summer which never stars until Sept. So we’d have from mid April-Sept to wait for new episodes, instead of May-Sept (small difference, but an important one.)

The ratings has dropped because of that NL story that got old real quick in my opinion plus they have so many plot holes it is getting so ridicules.

I agree with this–NL “got old” as you put it because it wasn’t actually the PP/NL story, was it? That’s what made OUAT so great the first season: the subtle differences in A and E’s version vs the stories we know. But they still retained some of their commonalities: Snow was still poisoned by the apple, Regina was still her step mother, TLK still woke up Snow, ect. We recognized the stories but enjoyed the nuances.

Peter Pan wasn’t Peter Pan even a little bit. Just in name. There was a Capt Hook, a Peter Pan, some Lost Boys, Tinkerbell, and Neverland the island but it was pretty much wholly different from Barrie’s work.

Looking at the charts however, there are two things to note:

1) More people are DVR-ing it instead of watching Live as opposed to S2

2) We didn’t fluctuate in ratings as much.

So while more people are choosing to watch OUAT later (which is a problem) we aren’t seeing wildly changing numbers every week. We evened out, so to speak.

Or did reruns on Season 3 so people could remember what happened anything but this break.

I agree 100%. And I said that in my first post

I will be surprise if they do make it to Season 4.

And this is where we disagree. Despite the “eh” ratings, we’re still one of ABC’s top rated shows. And, as always, you HAVE to keep the Rules of Syndication in mind. We are getting a S4. It’s like 99.99999999999999% confirmed at this point. ABC will announce in May, but we’re getting it. Even a show with lower rating than us (ie: Revenge) will get renewed because of Syndication.

Once ABC has that in the bank, then we’ll see what happens with a S5 or half a S5. But that depends on the S4 ratings, which means A and E do have some work to do if they want a 5th season.

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

[PriceofMagic]

I think the split season has been beneficial in that you’re getting the whole story in one continuous motion rather than constantly stopping and starting every few weeks. The biggest downfall is the long hiatus. Had Wonderland been saved for the hiatus, I think the fandom wouldn’t be so frustrated at times because we would still be getting our Once “fix”.

If they do decide to do a split season again for season 4, I hope they give us something to fill the hiatuses especially the winter one because winter is a gloomy season anyway made all the worse without Once.

All magic comes with a price!

Keeper of Felix

[ready_to_rumbelle]

HappyEndings wrote:

I will be surprise if they do make it to Season 4.

And this is where we disagree. Despite the “eh” ratings, we’re still one of ABC’s top rated shows. And, as always, you HAVE to keep the Rules of Syndication in mind. We are getting a S4. It’s like 99.99999999999999% confirmed at this point. ABC will announce in May, but we’re getting it. Even a show with lower rating than us (ie: Revenge) will get renewed because of Syndication. Once ABC has that in the bank, then we’ll see what happens with a S5 or half a S5. But that depends on the S4 ratings, which means A and E do have some work to do if they want a 5th season.

Well, I wouldn’t talk about a possible season 5, yet, because it’s way too early for that but at the moment there are only 4 ABC shows (please correct me if I’m wrong) which are doing better than Once in ratings (Scandal, Grey’s Anatomy, Agents of SHIELD and Modern Family). I’m definitely no expert in this, but as far as I know, the Sunday spot isn’t a very easy one for TV shows and therefore, I guess Once is doing quite good. So even without the advantage of Syndication, coming with a 4th season, it should be pretty much a sure thing.

[RumplesGirl]

Well, I wouldn’t talk about a possible season 5, yet

totally agree. The 5th season could go either way.

4 ABC shows (please correct me if I’m wrong) which are doing better than Once in ratings (Scandal, Grey’s Anatomy, Agents of SHIELD and Modern Family)

You are correct, but there are some difference.

1) Scandal is their top drama, also in its 3rd season, we can use it as a bench mark for how ABC would like ONCE to be doing

2) Grey’s  is a 10 yr show. At this point, so long as ABC gets money off of it, they’ll air it

3) SHIELD is a first year show BARELY pulling better number than us. In our first season we maintained a very high 3 or 4 demo. SHIELD is sliding into the lower 2’s, about where we are in our 3rd season. I’m actually a little worried about it after S2 if it doesn’t improve

4) Modern Family ABC’s comedy king and already in syndication.

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

[Red]

I’ m not sure if I like the split season or not. I did find the constant breaks annoying but this wait has also been hard, especially with that death spoiler :'( I don’t feel they pulled off the two separate story arcs though. I expected a solid conclusion to Neverland but  really there are so many unanswered questions and stuff I thought we would have seen like Pan/Hook/Bae/Tink flashbacks. I don’t feel it was wrapped up at all really.

[Myril]

When trying to explore if a split season is/was a good idea or not for OUaT, this is in a way the wrong time to discuss it. The interesting question is not, if the first half did okay, because the first half, the fall season part has been more coherent anyway. TV schedules become more erratic after New Year, the winter season part – that is when all the award shows, Superbowl and other stuff as big events especially make it hard to follow serials, some shows air in between, some air nevertheless and other jump around like no good. The interesting numbers will be the upcoming maybe 3-4 episodes, if the audience is coming back: will there be a significant drop or will the numbers stay the same as before the break or maybe even increase.

Find it interesting, that shows being offered at once like House of Cards are watched by people in different ways. Some do binge watching (all at once), some do a few episodes every day, other maybe an episode every week. Different viewing habits and urges.

The challenge is to do a good promotion to let people know, when the show will back, and make it look interesting to watch again. Think a majority of audience is still not die hard fan of the show, they like to watch, but they seldom spend time on forums, don’t follow cast and crew on Twitter, each other on Tumblr, having eyes on every relevant hashtag, and don’t go crazy with details and speculations. It’s about a good attention grabber telling average audience right in time (not too early not too late): show is back and it’s the one thing to watch now.

¯\_(?????? ?)_/¯

[obisgirl]

I think the split season has been beneficial in that you’re getting the whole story in one continuous motion rather than constantly stopping and starting every few weeks.

I agree.  The frustrating thing about season two, is that we had hiatuses all over the place.  It was nice when the show came back for The Cricket Game and a episode after that, but it went on hiatus again. And there other hiatuses after that until, I think it was the last 3-4 episodes where there were none.

The biggest downfall is the long hiatus. Had Wonderland been saved for the hiatus, I think the fandom wouldn’t be so frustrated at times because we would still be getting our Once “fix”. If they do decide to do a split season again for season 4, I hope they give us something to fill the hiatuses especially the winter one because winter is a gloomy season anyway made all the worse without Once.

That was the original plan for Wonderland, that it would air during the break between 3A and B, but for whatever reason, ABC set it to air at the beginning of the season.

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