why so long?

[PunkyD20391]

Why do people keep you waiting to see your shows? What I mean is, a show's last episode until the fall is in May. The season premiere is November then. Why do they keep you waiting for so long?

[KEJ2000]

You will notice that each new season lasts for exactly 6 months.  Thus, subtracting 6 from 12 [months in one year], the off-season is also 6 months.  During the off-season, then, this gives the TV network the exact same amount of time to repeat / re-air each episode once and only once.  Season = 6 months, Off-season = 6 months: equal amounts of time, on purpose.  Why not show 12 months' worth of all brand-new episodes, you ask?  Because each episode of a major TV show (such as The X-Files, CSI, or ER) costs $2 million to make.  After having spent that much money, the producers would like to show off their hard work and expenses by airing each episode twice rather than once per year.

[Backdrifter]

They have to have some time to make the new epsiodes - write, approve, prepare, cast film, edit and post-produce them, then get them scheduled.

[aurelia]

It isn't always that it's the network but that whoever's airing the show is trying to pull a fast one - for instance E4 kept saying that they were showing the season finale of The O.C. - but I knew from hqaving looked at the Fox website that we had only been shown the first half of season 1 - but when E4 started showing say episode 13 - they said they were showing the forst episode of the new season - which I knew wasn't true as the new season has only started airing stateside - BBC2 were worse they showed the penultimate episode of Roswell season 1 and waited over 6 months before airing the last episode because of programme scheduling that just takes the biscuit!!!