NBC Wants Fewer Episodes of 'Heroes' Next Year

Ad Age reports that we'll likely see a truncated season of Heroes next year, a result of never fully regaining its rookie season buzz following the writer's strike of 2007-2008 and the growing prominence of condensed seasons of other multi-layered and exceptionally pricy operations like Lost and 24. NBC will look to trim the number of episodes it orders from 25 this year to 18 or 20 next season, which will save the network money, both in production costs and external marketing. It also alleviates some of the pressure of being a high-priced show that hasn't been performing as well in the past two seasons, averaging fewer than eight million viewers per week this season. I spoke to a TV critic recently about CBS's Harper's Island, which is running a 13-episode season. He told me we should see more experiments along those lines over the next couple of years, and that serves two purposes. It allows for unique original programming in short spurts and it frees up the network schedule to allow for slightly shorter seasons for the more established shows. The season finale of Heroes is Monday night.

Comments

[MRPigg]

I like the way that TV is trending towards showing all episodes in a continuous arc with little interruption. One of the reasons there are a lot of quality shows on basic cable these days (including hands down the best show on television right now, Breaking Bad)is because this is how they do it. The season starts, they show all the episodes and then it's over.

The problem for networks is going to be deciding how to balance Fall and Spring schedules. Fox rules Mondays and Tuesdays in the Spring, but what do they do in the Fall without 24 and American Idol?

I like CBS's Harper's Island experiment, but the fact that the show creatively sucks ass may slow down the trend a bit.

[Bob Andelman]

Check out this interview with Milo Ventimiglia and Adrian Pasdar in which they discuss the finale and their "special" relationship: http://bit.ly/iZfvy.