Hiatus (television)

In television scheduling, a hiatus refers to a break of at least several weeks in the normal schedule of a broadcast programming. It can occur during a season of a television program, or can be between television seasons (usually starting in June and ending in August when shooting starts for the next season).

Planned hiatus

Many times television stations will implement a hiatus for their television programs for the sheer purpose of splitting up a season, just so it will run for longer until the next season is completed. An example of this is NBC's show Heroes, which took a 2-month hiatus starting in February 2007 and returned at the end of April 2007. Some programs also go on hiatus so that their television networks can reserve episodes for airing during ratings sweeps, wherein networks compute their television advertising fees based on their programs' ratings during that period. Programs "return from hiatus" in time for the sweeps period so as to generate high ratings, and as such usually include special content in programming such as guest stars, controversial and unexpected plots or topics, extended episodes and finales. An example of this is South Park, which usually airs seven new episodes during the spring sweeps, and seven more new episodes during the fall sweeps.

Cancellation

A network may put a show on hiatus before canceling it. This may be to:

• evaluate the series quality.
• warn the television producers in an effort to push them to produce a......
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