Scheduling, what a mess!

M

msu_jbird

New member
I'm a bit frustrated with most the US Animations venues in terms of their schedule.

A lot of networks right now have access to a very dynamic animation library that's not getting nearly enough use.

The focus from everyone (CN, Nick Toons and DXD) seems fixated on chasing 1 week rating goals as opposed to going after sustained, stronger, longer term goals.

The effect is, series are getting run into the ground while each series's episode library is being burnt through so fast, that a 26 episode series/season is sustaining a time slot for a minimal amount of time.

I don't understand how this is a good business model or a good model to follow to keep fans interested. Even when you crunch the numbers, it just doesn't seem profitable.

Why do all these networks feel as though they need to keep shoving mini-marathons at us?
 
I agree.

For example, Nicktoons airs Avatar no less than 10 times a day. I know it's popular, but that's just way too much even for a show with 61 episodes. Perhaps we will see more variety when TMNT and Power Rangers join the lineup.

Surprisingly, Cartoon Network is pretty good about having schedule variety. I don't see nearly as many marathons there as I do on Nick and Disney Channel.
 
Avatar / DBZ Kai is exactly what I am referring to.

I'm not sure what the exact status of the Marvel properties Nick had is, I tend to suspect they were pulled because of something Disney did, but there is PLENTY of room Nick could be using here.

Here's a good example:

06:00A - 08:00A: Fantastic 4, Ironman, X-Men
08:00A - 10:00A: Rocko, Rug Rats, Spongebob, Thornberrys
10:00A - 12:00P: Hey Arnold, Angry Beaver, Fairy Odd Parents
12:00P - 02:00P: Those live action shows they like to play
02:00P - 04:00P: Danny Phantom, The Mighty Bee, Invader Zim
04:00P - 06:00P: TMNT, Power Rangers, Avatar
06:00P - 10:00P: Primetime Premiers
10:00P - 12:00A: Fantastic 4, Ironman, X-Men
12:00P - 02:00A: TMNT, Power Rangers, Avatar
02:00A - 06:00A: ???

Thats just a really rough example and mind you, I'm not well walked in older NIck Toons, so someone might be able to come up with a better schedule, but I think those themes speak well for what I am going after.

The thing about using a library like this is the network really has to be more committed to maintaining the schedule but on the same token, they need to be ready to change it every quarter too.

To me, the goal is getting these networks to look more at quarters and less at individual weeks in goal setting.
 
Avatar the Last Airbender? Try Sponge Bob. Nick likes to air popular shows more than they should. Keep that up and some of there newer shows won't get ratings :shrug: I mean I gather why they air shows like Sponge Bob or iCarly over and over again, but new shows need to be given a chance.
 
Nicktoons and Nick have to have the worst schedules ever. They practically only show 2 shows sure they're good but add some variety.
 
Lets face it, DXD isn't much better.

I never liked the Jetix package, but under Jetix, scheduling was pretty interesting.

Now they are playing Phineas and Ferb, Zek and Luther and I'm in the Band FAAAAAAAAAR too much.

Disney is the biggest offender of having a REALLY GOOD library and not using it well.

I mean you can look at their 90s library and dig out Duck Tales, Chip & Dale, Darkwing Duck, Tale Spin, Bonkers, Gummy Bears, Care Bears.

I mean I wouldn't recommend it, but you could fill an ENTIRE schedule with those shows alone. A large majority of people around here agree that all those shows aged far better then most shows.

They could also start tapping Gargoyles again.

With these older titles, they could even add some more spice with it by upgrading them to HD quality. It's likely a good investment at this point ANYWAY.

Its also possible that Disney still has access to the DCAU stuff as well as Pinky and the Brain.

Then, of course, there's the ENTIRE marvel Library that Disney has been playing with. Frankly, I think this is one area the library Disney has been using well. I have to really admit, more often then not, when I am watching TV on Saturday Nights, I am likely watching DXD over Adult Swim.

It would also be really neat to see Disney develop their relationship with Viz a little more. There are some older shows Disney could easily tap there to add more spice to their schedule.

All of this and we've barely talked about their movie library.

I'd really have a lot of fun designing a DXD schedule. There's absolutely no reason DXD has to look like similar to the Disney Channel!
 
That's just how cable network execs think, unfortunately. The current regime at Disney, Nick and Cartoon Network believe in playing a hit until it hits them back. If a show proves to be successful ratings-wise, they'll play and encore said show to death because it's proven to put butts in seats.

One practice that I'd like to see put to an end in particular is how these networks tend to overplay the premiere episodes of their newest shows. Ideally, if a network has a show which runs premieres on a specific block or night, then the network should try to keep said show and especially its' premiere episodes exclusive: only give them 1, or at a stretch 2 encores throughout the week until the next week when another first-run episode premieres. A premiere block or night isn't special if you can see the new episodes at any given time after that on the channel, and a show loses its' glow if it's overplayed. To borrow an old showbiz adage, you should always leave 'em wanting more.

Also, a show shouldn't start airing on weekday mornings/afternoons until after it's been on for 2 or 3 whole seasons. A show with less than 26 episodes shouldn't be airing every day.

And all 3 networks have extensive backlogs of shows tucked away which they could be airing to fill up 'dead-air' spots rather than simply running the same 3 or 4 shows all day.
 
I absolutely agree there. Shows that are high quality shows really need to be allocated to weekly premiers.

The only tennent I'd argue a little is I don't mind encores as long as they are done tactfully and intelligently.

Going back to an old argument I made with CN back in the Toonami days, I think all the networks could make better use of the Friday NIght, Saturday Morning, Saturday Night, Sunday Morning and Sunday night Blocks.

Idealistically, it would be very neat if all the networks (CN, DXD and NT) all replicated one of those blocks someplace else to add visibility to those who CAN NOT watch it at those times.

Cartoon Network Example (using older blocks):
Friday Night: Cartoon, Cartoons 4 hour block
Saturday Morning: CN Originals 4 hour block
Saturday Night: Toonami 4 hour block
Sunday Morning: Toonami 4 hour encore block
Sunday Night: Cartoon, Cartoons 4 hour encore block
Monday Night: CN Original 2 Hour encore block (8:00P - 10:00P)
Tuesday Night: CN Original 2 hour encore block (8:00P - 10:00P)
Wednesday Night: Movie / Special / Mini Marathon (8:00P - 10:00P)
Thursday Night: Movie / Special / Mini Marathon (8:00P - 10:00P)

Every area intended to have a new premier would get an encore someplace throughout the week, but not to the point of stupidity.

That being said, I do really think series with less then 26 PREMIERED episodes in a PREMIER slot should be bared from weekday runs unless they are doing a mini-marathon intended to catch people up. I understand the value in that, it just needs diversity!

That doesn't mean running Avatar from 10-12, 7-9 and 12-2 is a good idea >.> That would mean HIGHLIGHTING once a week.

I think networks seem to forget they want to generate revenue not only from commericals but from video sales. Let's use Avatar as a good example since the series is broken up into good marketable chunks.

Lets say the series premiered seasons 1, 2 and 3 but now we're into season 4. Season 1, 2 and 3 have now hit syndication. It's not a bad idea to run Seasons 1-3 as a ONE EPISODE PER DAY syndication, but its also not a bad idea to play the first 4 episodes of season 4 in a mini-marathon in hopes that people will sit back and say "Hey, the weekday run is on Episode 6 of season 1 and I just saw a mini-marathon of h first 4 episodes of season 4. What the heck did I miss?" and have them head out and buy season DVDs or patiently watch the daily broadcasts till they catch up.

Either way, its generating GOOD MONEY.

Broadcasting 3 sets of episodes at different parts of the series only makes it so I can catch the majority of the series in about 2 weeks. Thats EXACTLY what happened with me and Avatar.

I think Symbotic Titan and Generator Rex would benefit from this treatment RIGHT NOW.

Frankly, I want Friday Nights and Saturday Mornings to feel special again and not just feel like I am getting the same old, same old.

To all these points, I have to really say FoxKids did REALLY GOOD with this in supporting Power Rangers and Digimon back in the 2000s and WB did just as good of a job supporting YGO and Pokemon.

A final thought that I think the industry as a whole really needs to explore is the possibility of 1 hour episodes instead of 30 minute episodes. For some series, I think this would actually be a very big assest. Some series flow much better if you are watching it in 1 hour chunks instead of 30 minute chunks. Even to that end, I don't think it should necessarily be seen as a bad thing for some shows to premier 30 minute episodes back to back.

Everyone else seems very lost in figuring out these formulas.

I think the only thing I can look forward to right now on Saturday Mornings is YGO 5Ds and thats frankly been hard for me to get into because of lack of any other network supporting it.
 
Nick is by far the most grevious of offenders in overplaying shows and variety-less schedules. They pratically air two shows a day in the non-Nick Jr. hours and Nick Jr. and NAN aren't really much better variety wise. Weekends tend to have more variety on Nick though so I guess there's at least that.

Nicktoons and DXD is a big fans of random stacks / mini-marathons and do so daily.

I don't even pay attention to Disney channel but it seems like they're doing about the same.

Have you ever noticed that it's often the case that shows with more episodes to air, air less than shows that have less episodes to air. Nicktoons Network is a prime example of this problem. Avatar and DBZ Kai air 5 or more times a day with Avatar clocking in with 60ish episodes and DBZ Kai currently around 40 episodes but it was being played constantly when it was around 20 episodes and as much as I like those shows and Invader Zim (which has less than 40 episodes total but gets aired close to 15 times a week) they could all stand to be aired less. Meanwhile Odd Parents and Rugrats with over 100 episodes each only air on the weekend for a total of maybe 6 airings a week and Thornberries, Hey Arnold, Angry Beavers and some other long running Nicktoons with around 100 episodes don't air at all.

Turner, Disney and Viacom could all stand to use their libraries more effectively but they all tend to rely on just a few shows and run different shows seemingly for the heck of it until they are bored of them and swap them out for other shows.

Nick Jr. and Disney Jr. are channels that should not broadcast 24/7 they could use late nights and overnights for reruns of Viacom and Disney properties that are safe enough for kids but don't regularly get played on Nicktoons, DXD, Disney, Nick, etc.

Comparitively CN does an okay job scheduling but they often enough overplay one show in particular and that's always changing. They went a little bonkers with Scooby-Doo Mystery Inc. recently for one, and at the point the show had less than 10 episodes to rerun. Between CN and Boomerang there's a decent amount of variety but they could certainly have more and they aren't even scratching the surface of Turner's entire library.
 
-begin rant-

Nicktoons has no variety whatsoever. I understand that they're focus has become that of action-adventure based programming (as a sort of balance to Nick standard being all-comedy), but driving down the same two shows on a daily basis does nothing good for anyone.

Take Avatar, which is far and away the best example. I just checked the TV guide, and in the next 24 hours, that show will air no less than 12 times, from now until this time (as of this post) tomorrow. Some of those are repeats, but still. That... is just beyond ridiculous. It only lasted 61 episodes for crying out loud! At this rate, they'll burn through it's entire episode library in a little over three weeks.

...and, of course, you can't forget the other glaring oversight with Nicktoons; the vast majority of shows that they aren't airing. This encompasses pretty much the entire 90's Nickelodeon library. What the heck happened here? Were all the film reels of Angry Beavers and Hey Arnold burned up in a warehouse fire somewhere?

Ugh, criminy. This aspect (the lack of 90's Nick programming) might be even more frustrating than Avatar airing more than a block of infomercials on late-night cable... especially when you consider what little comedy they do air on Nicktoons has been reduced to the likes of Barnyard and El Tigre. I mean, seriously... El Tigre. That thing barely cracked 26 episodes, it's about as unfunny as sin, and yet, it's getting a regular, almost daily time slot. Meanwhile, Angry Beavers hasn't aired on here in three years. What gives?

-end rant-
 
I think you're all forgetting who these channels are aimed at: Kids.

Kids like seeing the same shows over and over again in marathons, otherwise they wouldn't program like this. They're not going to air Rugrats and Angry Beavers in primetime when they can air the far more popular Avatar and Dragon Ball Z Kai several times in a row and get double the ratings. I'd love to see more diversity in the Nicktoons schedule, but as long as marathons get ratings, they're going to keep airing them ad nauseum.

Now, I don't necessarily agree with this practice, but that's just the way it is. Personally, I'd rather have Nick put out more (and improved, for that matter) DVD releases of their 90's programming.
 
Yeah I'm not sure why El Tigre gets a daily slot and I believe it usually has an hour block several days a week. They should probably keep that one to weekends or only 1 slot a day on weekdays.

People think when they get Power Rangers this overplay practice wont be as bothersome since there's a good 700 episodes to run. WRONG, because they're not going to be smart about it. They're going to run one chunk of episodes for half a year before switching to the next unless they run several of the series at the same time. They tend to do this with any long series. Making it a detrement for a long series to run on the network and making it nigh impossible to catch every episode before they consider it a flop and bury it. If TMNT takes off they'll give it plenty of slots but they'll probably cycle through the same batch of episodes several times before dabbling in a full series run the way they should run it (especially since that show likes to play up it's continunity but that hasn't stopped them from being rather random with re-airing Avatar, Wolverine and the X-Men and DBZ Kai so why would TMNT be any different?)

DXD wastes it's Marvel shows for the most part. The majority of them only air weekend late nights. Spectacular Spider-Man tends to only air in random stacks lately and X-Men Evolution last I checked was relegated to late overnight hours the way Gargoyles has been for years now.

One of the biggest problems with CN (and Nick actually) is Adult Swim (and NAN) overplay the same shows to death and back. Granted both don't quite have the library that CN and Nick potentially do have but there's plenty of shows on hand for them to be cycling through rather than burn out the same few shows.

That said, I can't say I really blame networks from doing that. Ratings trends indicate that viewers like consistency and they also like to see the same shows like they over and over and over and over again. So it doesn't matter when they air or how often, someone is going to be watching shows such as Family Guy, King of the Hill, The Boondocks, Robot Chicken, etc.There ought to be a bit more wiggle room and less encores though. Especially in an 8 hour segment of the day. Repeats on a 16 to 24 hour schedule isn't nearly as bothersome because they can be airing a good 8 to 12 hours apart from eachother on a well layed out schedule.

Repeating premieres within 3 hours is fine since they don't tend to have that many premieres going at the same time anyway but the weekday reruns don't need encores. If you missed it, it'll come back around soon enough (well maybe not with King of the Hill but you get what I mean, most shows on AS don't have 100 episodes).

That said the 3AM Family Guy probably does more than well enough that they don't dare get rid of it but they already sacrificed Robot Chicken's encore in favor of running less popular shows they tend to ignore otherwise and IMO they may as well repeat Family Guy and maybe a few of the more popular shows and then leave the remaining 2-3 hours to other shows.



Cerainly they leave prime time to their latest offerings, that only makes sense but there's plenty of other areas of the schedule they could be using more effectively.

You're also saying that like most 18-34 targeted networks don't do mini-marathons daily or rerun the same shows adnausm. When NAN literally plays the same show all night long on some nights. I already touched on Adult Swim but if you look at other networks that mostly show reruns you'll find they all play the same game and that's because it works. Not just with kids but with adults as well.

Now in the case of Nicktoons and DXD they're probably not benefiting that much from their mini-marathon stacks more than they would if they did those less. Look at The Hub, if that network starts edging up on Nicktoons and DXD then it's time for DXD and Nicktoons to learn a bit from the new kid. But as for now it works for them and I don't see it changing. Hour stacks are incredibly common for both networks and most shows on Nicktoons have at least enough episodes for that not to be too problematic in terms of overplaying shows so I don't particularly mind that they do that. And for the most part they're consistent which is more than I can say for DXD.
 
Sorry, what I really should have said was ''Kids like watching marathons of shows such as Avatar and Dragon Ball Z Kai. As long as marathons of those shows get ratings, Nicktoons is going to keep airing them ad nauseum.''

I know 18-34 targeted networks air constant marathons/show blocks as well.
 
Yes and clearly that kind of scheduling works for kids and adults but perhaps only for certain shows on any given network. And that's why people who prefer more variety are probably better off turning to on-demand, legal streaming and DVDs and Blu-Ray sets of shows they enjoy and watch them in whatever order they want. Unfortunately some shows aren't available through those means or even itunes (which seems to have a lot of things not even on DVD) but probably any given individual could find enough entertainment to keep them occupied despite that. If you can't, then get a hobby or something because at that point you're officially spending too much time infront of the TV or the computer.
 
You said it, dawg! :D

I watch most cartoons through DVD these days, since the various TV networks tend to run the same shows over and over again. The only time I usually watch satellite TV these days are when new episodes of a show I like are airing.
 
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