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In their zeal to start the TV season, the broadcast networks stretched out their hit shows, cut short also-rans and left viewers wondering what they missed.
©Washington Post
October 2, 2002
When is a half-hour sitcom not 30 minutes long? When is a one-hour drama actually 61 minutes? When is a season debut not a season debut?
Why, when it's the 2002-03 TV season!
For viewers who already are confused about what series are airing when and what day and time their favorite program has been moved to, the additional scheduling hanky-panky may be a headache. But when has it ever been about the viewer?
Last week, the first of the new season, some hit series ran long, and others ran short. One network even got the Nielsen ratings company to wipe one debut off that series' books after seeing the first episode's lousy numbers.
Most of last week's exercise in creative scheduling occurred Thursday, the mother lode of broadcast TV that included the season debuts of three of the biggest shows: NBC's Friends and ER, and CBS's CSI.
Coincidentally, all three ran long. Friends ended 2 minutes late, CSI ran 1 minute long, and ER started 1 minute early. All three shows drew an enormous number of viewers.
Friends, resolving May's cliffhanger season finale in which Rachel, who just had Ross's baby, agreed to marry Joey, averaged more than 34-million viewers. That is the sitcom's biggest debut audience.
Friends is now the most expensive television show for advertisers, commanding nearly half a million dollars per 30-second commercial. A cynic might think that NBC added a couple of extra minutes to it in order to get a couple more ads at Friends rates. Half a million dollars per 30 seconds, 2 extra minutes -- you do the math.
And why not? After all, the Friends spin machine has had most fans convinced for months that this will be the series' final season. It makes business sense that NBC would try to get more ad time into Friends by slicing off a couple of minutes of lower-rated Scrubs, especially for the season debut, which may be the biggest audience Friends will see this season.
But an NBC spokesman insists the "Friends" episode ran long for creative reasons and that it will happen again.
How nice for NBC if this excess flow of creative juices on the part of the Friends producers will keep down the ratings on CBS's Thursday reality series Survivor for, say, an extra 2 minutes all season? Because though Friends averaged 34-million viewers Thursday, the show that followed at 8:30, Scrubs, averaged 22-million.
And if NBC is going to shave 2 minutes off Scrubs, what does that say about Scrubs?
The same night as the Friends overrun, the debut of last season's most-watched drama series, CSI, ran a minute long, ending at 10:01 p.m.
A CBS spokesman says the network added promos for other series into the CSI episode, which made the show run long.
While CSI was running 1 minute late, ER was starting 1 minute early, at 9:59 p.m. That meant the two dramas went mano a mano for 2 minutes, which stank if you watch both shows.
The highly promoted ER debut logged nearly 27-million viewers.
Because the show that preceded it, the premiere of Good Morning, Miami clocked about 17-million, it's a darned good thing for NBC that the last minute of Good Morning, Miami was actually the first minute of ER.
NBC execs dismissed this as nothing new. ER has been starting at 9:59 p.m. for five years, the network said.
Nielsen Media Research data has assigned a 9:59 p.m. start time to ER only five times over the past five years.
The networks' scheduling shenanigans started Thursday morning when ABC execs woke up and discovered the season debut of The Bachelor II had pulled in 9-million viewers, losing 40 percent of the audience delivered to it by its lead-in, the season debut of My Wife and Kids.
ABC began spreading word that the episode was not really the season debut. Nielsen had said it was the season debut; heck, TV Guide said it was the season debut.
Both were mistaken, ABC said.
Also apparently mistaken was ABC, which on Sept. 18 sent out a news release about the "season premiere" of The Bachelor II on "September 25."
So when does The Bachelor debut? When it hits 15-million viewers?