Talk:Television show/Archive 1

Worldwide view required
I believe that the "how they are made" section of the article refers to the procedures and methods adopted in the United States. Since that is not an universal truth and there are tv shows being made in other countries, following different procedures, a direct note should be inserted informing that this is how it works in the U.S. &mdash; perhaps change the subtitle to "How they are made in the United States" or leave the title as it is but create a sub-subtitle that says "United States"?Redux 18:09, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I just added a note; didn't change any headings. - dcljr 09:12, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Terminology needs just a slight addition, as it seems that the English use two identical 'series' terms, pronounced differently, to denote what Americans call 'series' and 'season'.


 * I'm English, and as far as I know there's only one pronunciation of "series". Loganberry (Talk) 00:10, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Nope, we use series and season over here too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.250.106.23 (talk) 16:55, 20 June 2006


 * Aside from series, the term serial has been used in the past, though this has fallen out of common use. Bigpinkthing 16:09, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Software for television?
Software used in television? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.232.5.56 (talk) 05:42, 11 June 2006

Microsoft Office, on top of the usual production scheduling, audio and video editing software. Software can also used to control lighting and effects. Bigpinkthing 16:07, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

US / UK comparison
The UK model stated is rubbish, ideas bounce between the networks and indies (likewise where there are in house production teams, ideas bounce between commissioners and indies to explore who'd be most suitable making programmes). Both the UK and US use both methods and hire the talent accordingly. Team writing / sole writing is also a bit of a bodge, major US and UK series are written by by both sole contributors and by teams, there are plenty of high profile cases on both camps on both sides of the Atlantic. Bigpinkthing 16:03, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I have to agree, it is a bit of a hodge-podge. I think the whole section could be binned and re-written. KingDaveRa 10:51, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Further, UK usage tends to prefer "programme" over "show"; the latter is still seen as an Americanism. &mdash; Paul G 12:40, 27 April 2007 (UTC)


 * As far as I can tell, most programmes here are written by many writers. It's only really sitcoms that are creator written.Liam Markham 16:49, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Is there a better way to explain the US "season"/UK "series" difference without calling it a "short run"? That sounds more like a miniseries or unintentionally shortened programming. A season is a predetermined and often uniform schedule of episodes (e.g., 22 episodes per season of "Buffy," 24 episodes for "24", etc.) typically falling within a one-year cycle (but not always). Sharpvisuals 18:26, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Perhaps a table comparing the terms. In the US, series means the entirety of a title, for example, "Star Trek: The Next Generation" is a series. A particular year's run of the show is a season. Serial has a very particular meaning, one example is Flash Gordon, where the events of one episode follow right on the heels of the previous, often with a cliffhanger--66.162.55.2 (talk) 21:18, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

the pilot
who pays for the pilot? the creators or the networks? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.238.64.61 (talk) 01:52, 2 September 2006


 * Since the pilot is normally used to get networks to sign on for a show, I would assume the creators.-- andrew  22:09, 7 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I believe usually a network pays for the pilot. They're the only party with a revenue stream. Avt tor 16:13, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

It's different for each show. Depends on how much each party is willing to risk. Often one will give up syndication rights to the other in exchange for pilot/series expense-sharing. Sharpvisuals 18:28, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Rewrite
I'm doing a rewrite of this article. If people can assist i would welcome that a lot. I'm looking to focus it more on the proces of the television program, it's different formats, different production methods. Make it less American as well.
 * Only the commercial aspects of television are significantly different between countries; pre-production, principal photography, and post-production are not dramatically different whether a show is made in California or Kazakhstan. There are several commercial business models that could be (briefly) described.
 * Per the request in WikiProject Television, I will look at this article at some point. A good table of contents will help. I would like to ask editors to sign their comments here. Avt tor 16:20, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I reorganized the main article somewhat and expanded the section on production. I haven't changed most of the text, so the sections on "development" and "distribution" overlap somewhat. Actually, my concern now is not that this show is too American, but that it's actually too British. I don't mean that I want to delete content or give this a more American focus, I just think that further reorganization can help clarify things. Also needs links and sources. Avt tor 18:27, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * A distinction between a "series" and a one-time (minus reruns, of course) airing of a "special" should be made; also, documentary films that appear on TV after having been made for movie theaters, documentary television series, made-for-TV documentary films, etc. Categorizing these different types of documentaries can get confusing... -Eep² 04:35, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

6 vs. 13 episodes
For some reason, there is an anon that cannot accept the idea of a 6-episode season/series, as is common in some jurisdictions. Any thoughts on how to word this better so as to avoid the problem? --Ckatz chat spy  17:54, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
 * It makes sense to me as it is, pointing out that the US generally has longer series (seasons). Without wishing to offend, I think the problem is that the anon doesn't realise that the rest of the world's networks sometimes operate differently. Chris 42 22:15, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I might add that certainly in the UK, continuing series can have individual series (or seasons) of six episodes each (such as Blackadder or Fawlty Towers). A miniseries is defined as being a single series production, i.e. one finite batch of episodes, such as Band of Brothers. Chris 42 21:31, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Global Perspective
This article seems awfully US/UK centric, couldn't someone write about the television industry elsewhere? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Roadshell (talk • contribs) 04:08, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Proposed move
I propose a move from Television program to Television show per Manual of Style. --Joshua Issac (talk) 22:23, 14 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose; no need to move, "program" is more formal (and more widely used) than "show". Commonality is good, but in this case the title has not been the source of any significant disputes. --Ckatz chat spy  17:14, 19 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment: a Google search returned 16,600,000 results for television program, 1,120,000 results for television programme, and 25,500,000 results for television show. --Joshua Issac (talk) 19:12, 19 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Support - as the comment above says show gives way more results that progamme and program put together and its something that is nether british english focused or american english focused. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexsau1991 (talk • contribs) 18:11, 9 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Support - television show (TV show) is a far more common term. --The Aviv (talk) 17:35, 24 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Oppose It is the formal term for a Television program. It's a clear WP:ENGVAR problem. Also, this has been dormant for 6 years...without an issue.  Can't imagine why it's coming up now.  --Cheers.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.251.153.167 (talk) 19:19, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Assessment
The article is assessed as C-Class, yet had no references. WikiProject Television/Assessment says that a C-Class "article should have some references to reliable sources". --Joshua Issac (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Demoted to Start-Class. --Joshua Issac (talk) 19:12, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

U.S./US/USA
All United States abbreviations should be made the same. I'm not sure if Wikipedia has a policy on this, but I vote for "US" (as opposed to "U.S." or USA) as that seems to be the most commonly used one here, and it parallels "UK". —sdream93 (talk) 06:27, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Are you that much of a pretentious prick that you think anyone should give a damn about something so trivial? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.199.183.186 (talk) 06:22, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Do you want to get blocked again? --Joshua Issac (talk) 15:12, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

US bias (again)
The whole 'distribution' section of this article only concerns the USA. Affiliates, syndication, neilsen ratings and sweeps are all American concepts which few people outside of the USA have any idea about. The same applies to 'pilots' as well. This article should be about television programmes in general and not specifically towards one country or even towards English-speaking countries. The only good thing about this article is that reading it makes one happy to not be American and living in a world where there exist such formal rules regarding things like pilots, mini series, sweeps and other strange concepts.--Xania talk 00:19, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

This artical is very, very US bias, for one very clearly at the top it says most commenwealth countrys call it programme and the USA calls it program thats the the majority of the english speaking world for programme and one country for program, and since when have programes been known as tv shows in the uk. The opening section of this artical needs to be changed especally.Alexsau1991 (talk) 18:04, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Get to the point already
Hey, just swung by this article to read up on what exactly a "season" is... and there's so much English to EuroEnglish translation going on that I'm wondering when the article is even going to begin. So I'm actually going to not waste my time by reading this article. – Kerαunoςcopia  23:58, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Scripted programs are better
I personally think scripted television is more superior than unscripted television. I mean, that when you see reruns of comedy shows or drama shows, that's the kind of stuff you want to see as much as you want. But with reality programs...that's something entirely different. - Drunkenpeter99 (talk) 22:52, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

International view
I would like to add a passage on international TV programs performance and international TV format trading. For details please check my User page (Mentalmoses (talk) 14:45, 18 April 2010 (UTC)). Any comments? Thanks, Mentalmoses (talk) 14:45, 18 April 2010 (UTC)


 * as there is still no reaction from reverting editor, television project group or this talk page, I am now trying to get a Third opinion. Best, Mentalmoses (talk) 20:35, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Third opinion: Honestly I'm not really sure why Ckatz won't respond; perhaps he's too busy for this. Having said that, I agree with his reversion of the text on most successful shows. www.international-television.org doesn't strike me as a particularly reliable source. It's not well written or formatted, and it seems to be WP:POV. Further, you can't really say "According to FRAPA" and add the FRAPA's website as a source there; that's not really how references are supposed to be used. In all honesty this issue is more than three weeks old now and I'm not sure why we're just covering it, but whatever. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 01:31, 2 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks again! I did some additional research and tried to improve references. As stated on your talk page, it's seems fair to mention, that ITVE is well known in the industry and widely accepted as a reliable source. But nevertheless, I did some work on the references - now hoping for another review: User:Mentalmoses. Thx,, Mentalmoses (talk) 15:49, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry it took me awhile to respond to this. Honestly I still find the content to be lacking. First, "Beside that, the most successful formats all around the world were series, events and shows." is a generic sentence and has no purpose here. All you're saying is that people watch sports shows, series, events and shows. Well, okay... that's pretty much everything on television. My biggest problem is the lists in the paragraphs. Lists formatted like that are highly irregular for a Wikipedia article, and particularly on one that's more about prose. It seems to be little more than trivia. On top of that, I still have an issue with sourcing. For example, you use http://www.international-television.org/archive/2010-03-21_global-tv-euro-data-worldwide_2009.pdf to say "local programs like the traditional Swedish “Donald Duck and his friends” or the Portugues documentary “Maddie – a verdade mentira” have reached top ratings". I can't find any evidence of that in the source itself.
 * For the second paragraph, I can see that the first sentence is more or less reworded from the source given at the end. That's a bit troubling in itself, but beyond that, I don't see a reason to list out every country like that. All you're doing is restating what's in the source, and I see no purpose to that. Further, the second sentence (the one that starts with "The total production volume generated") is copied word for word from the source, which is unacceptable.
 * Here's what I would recommend: get rid of the lists and figure out how to get these two paragraphs into one. The UK leading in exports should probably be mentioned, as should the increase in volume. Maybe mention the top format and gameshow, and if any long-running formats do particularly well. But beyond that, we need better sources. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 20:25, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the good and very helpful advice! Now I'll be busy for the next couple of days, but I'll try and improve :-) Best, Mentalmoses (talk) 20:51, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

International View/Australia
I have just made some changes to the season/series section.

Basically I moved Australia out of the US/"series" bit, and added a new paragraph describing the Australian situation. Essentially, Australian TV doesn't really have programming seasons like the US. Because a lot of US, and to a lesser extent UK, programs do get shown in Australia, often the terminology that comes with that program simply gets used by default. So both series and season are used, somewhat interchangably.

Also, Australian televisions "series"/"seasons" are always within a calendar year, so the term "year" is sometimes used. (eg, "The Box was more down to earth in its first year.")

Current programs like Neighbours do not really have seasons - they are produced all year except for a few weeks holiday over summer. But with the backlog of episodes they aren't screened in production blocks (on programs like Neighbours the episodes screened in the first few weeks of the year were shot before the summer break; the end-of-year cliffhangers are not congruent with the production break and the aftermath of the cliffhanger is shot the week after the cliffhanger footage was shot.) That said, networks sometimes use terms like "the all-new season of Neighbours" in promos as part of their advertising strategy.

Tonight I'll check through some of by publications on Aust TV and see if I can find any references. Format (talk) 23:42, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

reverted why?
Well Musdan...here we go again. Why did you revert my grammatical correction edits? Since when is recorded-as a word? What the hell is the purpose of the -...are you using it as a comma when there is a comma in the English language. Boy are you a real winner in your interpretation of the English language. I think you have been reading too much bible English and not enough standatd American English. Yes, there is such a thing.(98.64.246.89 (talk) 02:21, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but the m-dash (—) is correct in this case (ask any admin or editor who's been around awhile). You could also use parentheses, but too many commas can be cluttered and confusing. --Musdan77 (talk) 02:57, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation. I can not say I can agree with it or that you are correct or not. The point is communication has been expressed and with it goes respect of other editors. Thank you for sharing your reasoning and with that goes cooperation and understanding. 74.233.153.232 (talk) 03:04, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Biannual ?
What does "biannual" mean? Does it mean "every second year" or "two times a year" ? I think a lot of people don't know that. Anyway, it's an unnecessarily technical word to use. I think it would be an improvement to use the expression "twice a year" or something similar. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.167.160.48 (talk) 22:13, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * The dictionary say that both definitions are correct. So I guess it's ambiguous as well. :D 124.188.145.99 (talk) 08:29, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

best selling TV series on DVD in America
Planet Earth - The Complete BBC Series (2007) – 2,656,702 units The Original Television Christmas Classics (2007, 2010) – 2,454,540 units Chappelle's Show Season 1 (2004) – 2 million+ units The Simpsons – n/a True Blood: The Complete First Season (2009) – 1,780,500 units Heroes - Season One (2007) – 1,597,185 units The Pacific (2010) – 1,488,763 units Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) – 1,231,232 units The Big Bang Theory: The Complete Fifth Season (2012) – 1,224,792 units True Blood: The Complete Second Season (2010) – 1,159,509 units Family Guy Presents - Blue Harvest (2008) – 1,141,575 units The Office- Season Four (2008) – 1,057,620 units True Blood: The Complete Third Season (2011) – 980,227 units Glee, Volume One: Road to Sectionals (2010) – 976,653 units Game of Thrones: The Complete First Season (2012) – 975,394 units Downton Abbey: Season Two (2012) – 952,279 units True Blood: The Complete Fourth Season (2012) – 935,770 units The Office - Season Five (2009) – 916,388 units Glee: The Complete First Season (2010) – 888,390 units Dexter: Season Four (2010) – 882,737 units The Walking Dead: Season One (2011) – 804,403 units The Big Bang Theory: The Complete Fourth Season (2011) – 789,735 units Hatfields and McCoys (2012) – 726,115 units — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.148.25.42 (talk) 00:58, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Television scheduling
This article appears to actually be about Television scheduling. Perhaps a Move would be in order. —Sladen (talk) 21:27, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 07:46, 30 April 2016 (UTC)