To borrow from the Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell) line relived in the introduction to every episode of Burn Notice: You know TV bloggers, bunch of bitchy little girls.
It’s money in the bank that by this time next week after Burn Notice’s “summer/mid-season finale” has aired, there will be more complaining about USA Network breaking up Burn Notice into separate mini seasons. USA Network isn’t alone in a practice that is fairly common on cable networks. But it’s something that really annoys some people. But it doesn’t bother me.
Bottom line, as long as you’re a fan of Burn Notice, you’re not going anywhere.
Sure, if Burn Notice was running on a broadcast network, it wouldn’t get broken up like that. But, if Burn Notice had wound up on FOX ( Burn Notice is produced by Fox) or USA Network’s broadcast sibling, NBC, for all we know it might have been canceled after four episodes.
Another thing you might read from the same people who won’t be happy over the split season is how the broadcast networks would KILL for numbers like Burn Notice’s. It’s total BS. The broadcast networks wouldn’t kill for Burn Notice’s numbers – they likely wouldn’t even maim for Burn Notice’s numbers. Not even in the summer when in its record-pulling heyday pulls fewer adults 18-49 than a new episode of Chuck. Some of us very well remember all the hand wringing over whether Chuck would be renewed or canceled with those numbers!
I’m glad Burn Notice is on cable. USA can show a gazillion episodes a week and attract new viewers. USA just ran another Burn Notice marathon yesterday. Plus, there’s far less immediate ratings pressure on a cable network where the luxury of actually being patient with shows still exists! Between the multiple airings of episodes and the extra patience, it seems to be working out well for USA Network.
In the summer of 2007, Burn Notice premiered to 4 million viewers. The first airing of the season one finale averaged 4.8 million. Season two opened with 5.3 million and closed with 6.1 million. And season 3 opened with 6 million, and then bounced around and bounced back to consecutive airings with 6.7 and 6.8 million (last Thursday night’s episode likely dropped a little, we’ll know for sure by Tuesday). An upward ratings trend that took a while to play out. Meanwhile, a scripted drama on a broadcast network that bows to less than 5 million viewers is likely only a couple of airings away from being banished to Saturday nights or summer burn-off theater.
I say when it comes to Burn Notice, leave USA Network alone! The people at USA seem to know what they are doing, and Burn Notice has already been renewed for season four. After this Thursday’s summer finale, we’ll have eight more episodes of season 3 plus sixteen more episodes of season four. That’s twenty-four new episodes over that will air over the next 18 months or so.
One argument used against the split schedule is that it kills ratings momentum. At least with Burn Notice, the data doesn’t bear that out. The first season aired consecutively and was off the air 10 months before the season two premiere which set series records at the time. They split season two up and the second half premiered in late January to good, though not quite record numbers, but it was also up against Thursday night regular season broadcast competition rather than summer fare. The season two finale in March, also against regular season broadcast competition set records. The season three premiere a few months later was just behind that record, and it set new and consecutive records with the July 16 and July 23 airings.
I understand about wanting to watch things more sequentially, but figure that if I don’t want to wait between episodes, I can just wait for the season or even the series to finish and then get the DVDs and watch everything back-to-back. I’ve watched a lot of stuff that way, from the first few seasons of Lost and Supernatural to the whole series of shows like The Wire and The Shield. It’s definitely a great way to watch. But as long as the cable networks air things in ways that yield more episodes of shows, I don’t find the scheduling maddening.
To paraphrase the Same Axe (Bruce Campbell) line relived in the introduction to every episode of Burn Notice:
You know TV bloggers, bunch of bitchy little girls.
It’s money in the bank that this time next week there will be a bunch of bloggers whining about USA Network breaking up Burn Notice into separate mini seasons. USA and Burn Notice aren’t alone in the practice that is common on cable networks. But it’s something that really annoys some people. It doesn’t bother me though. I just give in to the reality.
Bottom line, as long as you’re a fan of Burn Notice, you’re not going anywhere.
Sure, if Burn Notice was running on a broadcast network, it wouldn’t get broken up like that. But, if Burn Notice had wound up on FOX (Fox TV Studios produces Burn Notice) or USA Network’s broadcast sibling, NBC, for all we know it might have been canceled after four episodes.
Another thing you might read from the same people who won’t be happy over the split season is how the broadcast networks would KILL for numbers like Burn Notice’s. It’s total BS. The broadcast networks wouldn’t kill for Burn Notice’s numbers – they wouldn’t even maim for Burn Notice’s numbers. Not even in the summer when in its record-pulling heyday pulls fewer adults 18-49 than a new episode of Chuck. Some of us very well remember all the hand wringing over whether Chuck would be renewed or canceled with those numbers!
I’m glad Burn Notice is on cable. USA can show a gazillion episodes a week and attract new viewers (USA ran another Burn Notice marathon on Saturday). Plus, there’s less pressure on a cable network where they can afford to be more patient. Between the gazillion episodes and the extra patience, it seems to be working out for USA.
In the summer of 2007, Burn Notice premiered to 4 million viewers. The first airing of the season one finale averaged 4.8 million. Season two opened with 5.3 million and closed with 6.1 million. And season 3 opened with 6 million, and then bounced around and bounced back to consecutive airings with 6.7 and 6.8 million (last Thursday night’s episode likely dropped a little, we’ll know for sure by Tuesday). A scripted drama on broadcast that bows to less than 5 million viewers would likely be banished to Saturday nights before being killed off
But either way, leave USA Network alone! When it comes to Burn Notice, the people at USA seem to know what they are doing, and Burn Notice has already been renewed for season four. So after this Thursday’s summer finale, we’ll have eight more episodes of season 3 plus sixteen more episodes of Season four. That’s twenty-four new episodes over that will air over the next 18 months or so. I’ll take it with no complaint.
definitely agree. personally I like having it spread out, makes the show last longer in my mind. incidentally, is the winter premiere date known yet?
January 10?
i dis agree
when a show i like is off air
say like rescue me-for a long time-i find it hard to either get back into the show or i have found another show to watch in its absence.
“Rescue Me” never ran split seasons, it always ran its episodes straight through. I agree that a 19 month absence from the airwaves is not a good thing.
24 shows over 18 months is slightly more than ONE SHOW A MONTH!
That SUCKS, Bob!
As the Church of the Subgenius is wont to say, “Too much is not enough!”
I want my WEEKLY Fiona fix!
Just like I want my WEEKLY Summer Glau fix, my WEEKLY Yvonne Strahovski fix, my WEEKLY Gina Bellman fix, my WEEKLY Beth Reisgraf fix, my WEEKLY Anna Torv fix, and now my WEEKLY Amanda Tapping/Emilie Ullerup fix (Sanctuary)!
Oops, forgot Anna Paquin, Michelle Forbes, Eliza Dushku, Dichen Lachman, and probably several others.
Split seasons SUCK! Period. Bottom line. No further discussion needed.
The biggest problem I have with the split season is that now I have to wait months for a new episode.
Really, I would like them to figure out how they can have new episodes every single week…well, I’ll give them a break for Christmas… 
love split season
I would prefer they have 30 episodes and have a new episode every week for half a year.
Will be interesting how Royal Pains performs without the Burn Notice lead in but I think it will hold up on its own as it only has 5 episodes left once Burn Notice finishes.
Splitting the season isn’t new as USA do with Monk and Psych although I believe Monk will run uninterrupted and Psych will take a break and TNT are splitting Leverage into two mini seasons.
Wait, Royal Pains isn’t ending at the same time? That seems a bit odd.
I like the idea of a split season, as long as you don’t have more than a six month separation period to kill the momentum. It also gives you a number of episodes closer to the 22 that the Networks have, but the quality control over what you put out there that the typical 13 episode order cable has.
I don’t mind the split season if the split had more episodes in it. This split is only (doubling checking iTunes season pass) 9 episodes long. A normal season is 22 episodes and a lot of shows do 13 with a hope of a back 9 pickup (Chuck being one of them). I enjoy Burn Notice and it has been the only show that has held my attention all summer. I would just like more episodes, as greennogo states, to get us closer to 22 episodes.
Mr. Show ran in even more bizarre times and everyone sill loves it. If by everyone you mean people who appreciate an HBO show from the mid 90’s. Empirically proves that epic show can be destroyed by bad schedule.
Holly, I think USA doesn’t like to split things up in the first season — and also probably wants to see how Pains does without the Burn Notice lead-in. I’m not sure it could’ve predicted the early success, but as others have noted, the typical cable show gets 13 airings. Burn Notice expands to 16 which makes the split a bit easier.
Pains didn’t have 16 episodes for its first season, though it did get an order of 16 when it was renewed for a second season, so I think we can count on a split season two.
Its their way of saying “Remember, we don’t give a damn about YOU – its all about money!” and that’s nice of them. Then we don’t forget it
The split seasons of Monk work perfectly for me. It never wears out its welcome and you don’t have to wait 12-18 months between seasons the way you do for Curb Your Enthusiasm.
It only works for a show that doesn’t do season-long arcs, though. It took forever for each new season of The Sopranos, but you could never have broken up a season of that show, it needed to suck you in and hold you for 13 weeks.
i like the split seasons too
i always loved how i had psych and monk to watch in the summer (although this year they are starting the same week school starts up for me) but i don’t mind it allowed me to watch ghost adventures which they are splitting toojust in time for monk and psych
i think it kinda makes the year go by faster too
Blah.
Blah.
Blah.
It’s a well-written show, just enjoy it.
“I can’t have all my candy now. I have to wait until after dinner. Waaah!”
Get over yourselves. This is a show that grows week to week. After watching most all of the marathon yesterday, I’m particularly struck by how *dark* the last few episodes are compared to the almost happy-go-lucky tone of 2007, for example.
You’ll get all your shows, you’ll be fine.
(And yes, math whiz, 24 shows over 18 months is 1.33 per month, but they’re not *showing* 1.33 a month, are they? If you’re really desperate, you might go do a WHOIS search and see if JerkinItForFiona.com is open….)
Split seasons work for some shows. Obviously it works for Burn Notice, Monk, Psych and the like. I think it hurt Battlestar Galactica, as did the long gaps between seasons (i.e. the year-long hiatus between Season Three and Season Four). Starting a season in July, going on hiatus in August/September and returning in January before wrapping up in March is fine with me. The ten month gap during the third season of Eureka was less than ideal.
In a perfect world, I would like to see cable dramas debut in June and run thirteen weeks through September. I’m not sure why cable shows typically don’t premiere until later in the summer, in July or August, because then they have to be split or face competing with the broadcast networks in September.
I don’t mind the split seasons, but it would be nice if they threw some type of a blurb at the end of the midseason finales to give viewers a clue when the show is coming back. It gets a bit annoying when a show disappears and you simply don’t know when you will see it again.
I don’t mind the split seasons of Burn Notice at all since they loaded the previous summer’s finale so that it ended in a cliffhanger. It also represented a logical halfway point – we saw the job set up in the first half and we saw the aftermath of that in the second half. That works for me. I just wonder how the summer finale will redirect the narrative.
@Mike G – It would be nice if they let us know during the summer finale when the show would be back in the winter but I don’t think that USA even knows for sure at that point. I just usually rely on the marathons they show around the time the show comes back each winter/summer to give me the cue that it’s time for some more slick spy action!
Here’s the bottom line: Unless the show is wildly successful, it’s likely that splitting the seasons is going to hurt the continuity of the audience.
It’s like shooting yourself in the foot.
It’s stupid.
TV shows – even procedurals like Burn Notice – have momentum. Interrupt the momentum, you lose audiences. It’s bad enough there are “seasons” which big gaps over summer. At least in summer people have other things to do, so that’s not entirely unreasonable.
Arbitrarily splitting a show over many months just to make it SEEM like it’s popular enough to last long is idiotic.
But apparently there are plenty of idiots who think that way. When their show loses momentum and then audience and gets canceled, they’ll find out.
Your personal preference aside, the split season is demonstrably not hurting the ratings for BURN NOTICE. It may not be the right strategy for every show, and it may not be the right strategy indefinitely, but right now, it’s working for USA.
@Richard Steven Hack – But there will always be gaps – whether it be in mid-season or between seasons. Is it better to have 36 week break between seasons or to have 18 week breaks between half-seasons? I contend that as long as you treat halves of each season as if they were their own season, it can work. Think about it – the second season of Burn Notice built to the summer finale, topping it with an explosion and cliffhanger, and then the second half of the season built to the season finale. I treat those two distinct arcs as their own season. In the end, it’s just semantics.
And as Bryan put it, it’s working.
I personally don’t care. As long as the show remains on, I am a happy camper. I like the wait, makes the next new episode oh so much more exciting to watch. Please just keep Burn Notice on, that I all I ask.
I didn’t mind the split last season, partly because I thought the show was going through … not a rough patch, but a not-quite-smooth patch. This season I’m as caught up in it as I was during the first season and I hate that it’s already over. January is so far away.
If Burn Notice were on network TV, they’d do those things they love to do to your favorite shows — like skip a couple of weeks with no explanation, then put two episodes back to back with the first being a rerun, then move it to another day without telling you, then change the time without sufficient notice. Then shut it down for *weeks* at a time with no explanation, only to revive it. And never, of course, run Marathons so you can fill in missing episodes!
Screw the networks. They’ve worked hard to alienate every loyal TV viewer. You can have ‘em. I’ll take USA and its like, any day.
If I had my way I would want to see a new episode every week! However, I understand why they do it and I honestly do not mind the split seasons because it gives you something to look forward to on TV during the summer and winter seasons. I LOVE this show so whatever they decided I am so there!
A split season means we get new shows before we would with a traditional season.
All of USA’s shows are successful and Burn Notice is sizzling. They clearly know what they are doing. All I want is 2-hour season premieres and finales – pretty please?
The only thing I question with the split seasons is why USA would want two such differing atmospheres of competition. The summer is perfect for cable to take advantage of the lull in quality network programming, but January is such a blockbuster time that I’d expect that some casual viewers, even those who may be aware of the show’s return, might have something else to watch in the same time slot. Yes, there are DVRs, but those ratings are very different in their advertising value. I’m surprised they don’t want to simply fill all of the summer season, by starting a little earlier and going further into August. But if it works, then I guess I can deal…
Though I don’t consider waiting for the DVDs to be a solution, because then you end up waiting over a year, and paying again for something you already pay the cable company for (not that I don’t want all these shows on DVD eventually, but I don’t have the money to just buy them all as soon as they come out, and I’d rather not wait even more for them to either go on sale or for me to have extra money).