Network Schedules

My first memories of television revolve around premiere week. My birthday is in the second week of September, and traditionally that was the week that all the new shows premiered. And generally the timeslot they started the season in was theirs until they were canceled. If they were coming back the next fall, they even kept that timeslot all summer. They may have rerun the season's shows three or even four times, but they kept their timeslot.

As time went on, new scheduling trends emerged. Shows were juggled from night to night based on the competition. Season premieres were pushed back, sometimes past the new year. Networks had less patience with new shows, and canceled some shows before others even had their premieres! For awhile, it seemed that the whole concept of a "new fall season" would become as obsolete as tail fins on Chey Bel Aire's.

Fortunately that hasn't happened. Thanks mostly to vocal affiliates, the networks have rediscovered the promotional benefits of launching new shows at that time of the year when people start coming back inside as the sun sets earlier. "Premeire week" has pretty much gone away, or at least a joint premeire week. Networks are staggaring their premeires, not just putting them off for later. By the time the second week of September rolls around, there will usually be some shows that will have caught an early buzz with an August premeire. Early premeires particularly can benefit shows aimed at teens who'll set their viewing habbits the first week of school, and use last night's shows as fodder for conversations with new social cliques.

Of course there will always be shows that won't be ready for an early premeire. It's pretty much a given that the first new The Simpsons episode will be the new Treehouse of Terror, and they'll call the first new episode in November the "season premeire". On the bright side, that also means they'll have new episodes to last (for the most part) all the way to the May sweeps.

But despite the early birds, and the late premeires, early September has once again reclaimed it's position as the most important time of the year. Sure, the November, February and May sweeps will provide the numbers that people will hold dear, but it's that big launch in September that provides the momentum for the November sweeps, and the networks are embrasing it.

Still, I miss the days of my youth when I could plan my whole year based on those grids published each summer.

The Fall 2005 Network TV Schedule Grid
ABC Shows	CBS Shows	NBC Shows	FOX Shows	UPN Shows	WB Shows