Televison hiatus explained: Why shows go on break

Have you found yourself sitting at home at night and having nothing to watch except reruns of shows you have already watched? You are not alone in this.

As many of you know, this is mid- season break time for almost all of the big name shows. What many people don’t know is why these shows on this are called on for unruly hiatus. You would think networks would want to have shows running through the heart of winter when people are bundled up inside, but that is where people are wrong. All network productions are based on one huge thing: numbers.

Numbers are what makes the network world go around. How many people watch the show? How many advertisers are paying for ads to be played during a certain show? One huge number that people do not consider in a show’s life and what time the show is played. Timing is everything. All of these numbers a television executive must consider before they renew a show. So what does this have to do with mid-season breaks?

Without the mid-season break, shows would end around mid-February, depending on the start date, which would lead to the show missing the spring sweeps.

What are sweeps? Sweeps are when all of the television companies take a count of how many people watch the show and this number is the key sell- ing point to ads and the main factor in the “sink or swim decision” of a shows life. Look at shows that were good yet cancelled. Take Dracula, a good show that aired, but on Friday nights. If you are at home on a Friday night and are watching television, I’m sorry, but you need to get a life.

Mid-season breaks are nothing but a ploy by television networks to prolong the end of a season and get more viewers by rebroadcasting the episodest- from the beginning of the season. It all comes down to the same huge concussion numbers.