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History lesson: Birth
of the midseason
Now an institution, it was a risky ploy 40 years ago
By Ed Robertson
Forty years ago this month, CBS
introduced a daring new programming strategy: the midseason, or what's
known by many today as the second season.
Originally borne out of
desperation, it was a concept that would dramatically change television.
The second season most immediately served to give struggling networks a
chance to salvage their lineups. But its impact was broader. It also
served to introduce the modern nine-month, September-to-May television
season.
In keeping with the second-season tradition, the networks
this month are unveiling a host of new series, including “Committed”
and “Medium” on NBC, “Numbers” on CBS, “Jonny
Zero” and “Point Pleasant” on Fox, and a number of short-run reality
series. We are seeing a lot of the heavy promotion we've come to expect
with the midseason, most notably Fox's hyping of the coming new season of
“American Idol.”
Yet looking back, the advent of the second season was a modest
notion. It was 1964 and CBS was N0. 1, but it was facing its first
challenge in years. CBS president Jim Aubrey was worried. New ABC shows
such as “Bewitched” and “The Addams Family” were siphoning away
viewers from many established CBS favorites. Worse, most of its new shows
were failing to catch on.
Desperate, Aubrey decided to completely revamp the CBS
schedule going into January, changing the timeslots of 11 series.
Aubrey's move was a risky one. While occasional
tinkering was not uncommon—“Rawhide” was a midseason replacement
when it premiered on CBS in 1959—no network had ever attempted such
wholesale changes to its schedule in the middle of a television season.
Aubrey’s gamble paid off. CBS’s second-half numbers were
good enough to hold off ABC, and the network finished again at No. 1. But
it wasn't enough to save Aubrey's job. He was fired at the end of the
season.
Nonetheless, an important precedent had been set in network
programming. One year later, another desperate network would implement
Aubrey’s strategy, carrying it a step further.
Ironically, that network was ABC.
Despite its strong new lineup, ABC found itself struggling in
a distant third because of two words: in color.
While the vast majority of TV households had black and white
sets, sales of color TV sets had increased 77 percent during the 1964-'65
season. Color was quickly taking over.
NBC and CBS were quick to recognize the trend. ABC was not.
“In the fall of 1965, NBC became the first nearly all-color
network with only two of its shows, 'I Dream of Jeannie' and 'Convoy,' in
black and white,” note pop culture historians Harry Castleman and Wally
Podrazik in "Watching TV: Six Decades of American Television."
“At the same time, CBS reached the 50 percent color
mark in its schedule. ABC lagged behind both and felt the pinch as the
ratings for the fall 1965 premieres came in.”
Hoping to catch up, ABC took the concept of the midseason
overhaul to the next level. While Aubrey simply moved old shows into new
time slots, ABC introduced a brand-new lineup of color shows, including a
splashy, irreverent and brilliantly executed series based on the Batman
comic books.
“Batman,” in fact, became the lynchpin of what ABC called
the “second season.” The network launched a massive publicity campaign
to hype the premiere of the show in January 1966. While not all of ABC’s
midseason shows took off, “Batman” became an immediate hit.
The success of “Batman” spawned the network tradition of
using January as a month of television events, from epic miniseries (“Roots”)
to primetime Super Bowl telecasts and high-profile series premieres (“The
A-Team,” “The Wonder Years,” “Survivor: All Stars”).
The second season also added three months to the traditional
television year.
Before 1965, most network series aired first-run episodes
from September through February and reruns from March through August. The
networks then announced their lineups for the upcoming fall season at the
end of February.
That changed, however, with the onset of midseason premieres.
February was considered much too soon to account for shows that started
their runs in January. Consequently, the network upfronts (as they’re
known today) were pushed back until May. So was the end of the TV season.
Forty years later, the September-May television season is
still around. Yet the importance of January has been greatly diminished.
Though still used to launch new series, in recent years it has mostly been
relegated to winter reruns.
This is so for a number of reasons.
The networks usually hold back on running event programming, as
well as first-run episodes of top-rated shows, until February so as to air
them as part of sweeps. Even this year’s Super Bowl will be broadcast on
the first Sunday of the February sweeps.
But more important, the notion of fixed seasons has been on
the wane. The idea of the 12-month TV season means that September and
January are now competing with all the other months when it comes to when
new shows will roll out. It's now less about a season than a strategy that
works for an individual network or show, the calendar be damned.
So when we watch this January's new shows, be mindful of that
history. Also be aware that we will see less and less hoopla next year and
the year after, as this tradition of television fades.
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Jan. 13, 2005
©
2005
Media Life
-Ed
Robertson is a television historian and a regular contributor to Media
Life.
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