Gleeful

I don't even know if that's an actual word. Not that it matters. I just watched the fall finale of Glee and am totally in love with that show. I won't spoil it if you haven't checked it out yet. Though I don't know why anyone wouldn't want to watch a feel-good, well written show starring Jane Lynch. duh.

Anyway, it got me thinking about television and how effed up the schedules have become. I remember when a season opened right around the beginning of Autumn and went solid (okay, a few repeats around the holidays) until May when the season ended. We spent June, July and August outside, with family, on vacation, or whatever. We knew that when the evenings started coming earlier as the days grew shorter we would be able to watch our favorite programs before bedtime arrived.

Now? Not so much. We have Summer seasons, half seasons and fall finales. What I'd like to know is why? I am a huge fan of Supernatural. Season 5 began airing on Sept 10 with the fall finale on Nov 19th. New episodes are scheduled to resume at the end of January. What. The. Hell.

Viewers are lucky to get 20, 21 or 22 episodes a season.

When I was a kid we would watch Dallas and Falcon Crest on Friday nights. They ran back to back and it became a family tradition of sorts. Those seasons would begin in the fall (Sometime in September, October or early November) and would run faithfully though the spring ending in either April or May.

Viewers got on average 30 episodes (sometimes 27, sometimes 33) throughout the lifetime of the show.

Granted television now involves more special effects, time consuming and complicated scripts, sets and music. These shows also have to compete with the stars desires to participate in other projects and schedule restrictions. I get it. I just don't like it.

Another thing that I am not liking is the trend to have a season finale and then introduce new episodes during the season break to fill other time slots or boost ratings (I'm talking to you The Closer). It's great that we get the new episodes, it's just not great that we have to guess when (or even if) they are going to air.

Television programming doesn't seem to understand that TiVo, DVR's and the like are recording shows so that we can watch them without commercials on our schedule. TV when we want it. I don't think that time slots mean all that much anymore and don't make or break a show. These magical little machines can be programmed to record only new episodes so that we don't end up with a DVR filled with stuff we've already seen. Now having a winter hiatus would have made sense before the invention of programmable DVR's.

We're all busy this time of year with holiday parties, family gatherings, shopping, decorating and Santa sighting. There are games to be played with the kids, cookies to bake and little black dresses to buy, wear once and bury in the closet. I just want to be able to watch my favorite shows when I'm home with a little down time.

Also, I've seen some great shows taken off the air (Journeyman!) while crap fills the airwaves (ANY reality TV at this point is crap people, total crap).

I have some friends that are a "Nelson Family" (an antiquated system of monitoring people in "middle America" to judge what the "average" American watches) and hope that they're just as interested in quality programming as I am. I hope and pray that Big Brother never fills their screen or survey box....