When did the terms "season finale" and "series finale" come into use for TV shows?

Just wondering, did they advertise in the earlier years of television that the final episode of the season was the "season finale" or if the final episode of the show was the "series finale?" Did they even acknowledge that it was the last new episode of the year at all? Off the top of my head I know that the series finale of MASH was a big deal, but were there earlier instances?

 

The finales to Mary Tyler Moore and The Fugitive were big.

 

I remember those terms back into the 1970s.

I also remember the term "repeat" which would be helpful if still used today.

 

Earlier than M*A*S*H, I have no idea, I was too busy being a kid, and having fun, than studying the dynamics of TV.
By the time it went off the air, I was a married man, about to be a father.

 

I think TV Guide may have come up with this in the late 1970s. I seem to recall they may have actually put that in a "Close-Up" for The Fugitive in 1967...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_finale

 

Yeah, the series finales of The Fugitive was a big deal, and advertised as such...

 

I guess shows in the early days didn't really have season- or series-long story arcs, so finales weren't really necessary. Most episodes were self-contained so the final episode of a season or series could be just like any other regular episode.

 

But that was something of an anomaly. As another poster mentioned, back then most shows didn't have arcs - or the unique set-up that drove "The Fugitive." Even Gilligan and his buddies never made it back from the island.

 

When did "season" become a useful term in television broadcasting? For some reason, I always thought a years worth of shows was a "season." They started in the fall, ran through December, we got repeats in the winter/early spring, and nada in the summer(maybe more repeats). Then the next fall, the new year began. Now it seems like a season is a certain batch of shows, sometimes years apart, sometimes multiple batches in the same year. For example, The Simpsons have 25 seasons (began in 1989) and That Metal Show is on season 14 (began in 2008). Seems to be a variance in definition..

 

Well, they actually did, just not until a decade after the show ended.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_from_Gilligan's_Island

 

As far back as I can remember, certainly into 1962-1963. I can recall the big 3 networks proclaiming, "this season, watch as a lone man fights for justice!" or whatever canned description of the show they had. I bet it came from the advertising business, since they had to schedule ads by the quarter, and they would refer to their ad purchase as "a seasonal buy." Broadcast TV is all about de ads.

 

I enjoy mostly older shows, but a few new and newer programs as well. Fitting in this "topic" somewhere should be the notion that most older programs didn't have much continuity per se - an episode from one season was interchangeable with episodes from other seasons. At some point in the 80s or early 90s, serialization became kind of standard (I understand not ALL older shows weren't), thus storylines were "halted" at season's end and what better way to ensure interest than to end the season with a cliffhanger.

Things have never been the same since, whether the program warranted the attention or not.

 

Blame Larry Hagman's agent.

 

YES! IIRC The Fugitive ads called the last show of the Series "A Finale"...

 

yes, gone are the great days of The TV Guide...IIRC, now they only list up to 10:30 PM?

 

I remember the networks saying something a few years ago about stating a show is a repeat in print hurts ratings. Apparently, there is a large segment of the population too dumb to realize they are watching a show they already saw.

 

just another part of the The Nanny situation...

 

This may be why all those Seinfeld shows on TBS seem familiar to me...

And I'm on Comcast cable, if you use their on screen guide to see a description of a show, it clearly says, right from the beginning, whether it's "new" or a "repeat."

 

Yes, there has always been a "season", my point was that the definition of what a season is has certainly changed..

 

Oh, absolutely. Fox announced awhile back that they intend to make pilots and introduce new shows pretty much all year long. I think what really shook things up was AMC, showing Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, Mad Men and so on at different times of the year. The additional competition from HBO, Showtime, FX and so on has drastically changed the landscape of TV -- particularly advertising and ratings. Netflix and Amazon in particular have changed everything.

 

Maybe you have a point there, I would imagine breaking things into shorter "seasons" would allow for greater revenue- you get to market the show twice, or three times instead of once, right? If the show becomes a hit, then the added "seasons" only increase the opportunity for profiting more often. I guess my field of view, 60s/70s TV, focused on a season being ~24 episodes, which were repeated after the season was over, which covered ~48 weeks of the year, leaving holiday or special programming the other few weeks. I just seem to remember Happy Days being on year round. Now we have Walking Dead with ~13 episodes as a season (still repeated endlessly it seems). Throw in the fact that they can sell DVDs/Blurays of the "seasons" more often too...

As for Fox introducing all year round. I don't if anything will help the seemingly revolving door of shows we have going on. Is it me or do more new shows premiere and disappear than they used to? I don't know what a hit show is anymore, used to be strictly ratings but now I don't know...doesn't seem like you can take the time to develop an audience- you either hit it big right off or get cancelled quickly..

 

Yes, I agree. Some pretty big stars like Dick Van Dyke and Jerry Seinfeld have reflected that if either of their classic shows were on today, they would've been cancelled ofter 6 episodes and been relegated to the trashcan. Some series need a solid year for people to "discover" the show and realize how great it is. Nowadays, they ain't gonna get that time.

It's sobering to reflect that the networks gave the Michael J. Fox show, the Robin Williams show, and the Sean Hayes show all 22 solid episodes to try to find an audience... and they all failed. Some stars are so powerful, they can insist that the network pay for and air all the episodes, no matter what. The network hates this. I think it's going to happen much less frequently unless you're a real sure thing. And there are no sure things in television nowadays.

Look at the flops generated by J.J. Abrams, Spielberg, Joss Whedon, and several other A-list producers. As wacky as predicting movie hits are, I think trying to get a TV hit is about 100 times harder. But man, when it does, there's a billion dollars profit.

 

On the HD DirecTV box, they list "original air date" so if that matches today's date then it is new. However, I have an old SD DirecTV box in my bedroom that has no such feature. It is a minor inconvenience but kind of silly I sometimes I have go from system to system if I'm not sure an episode is new or not when one "R" would do the trick.

 

It blows my mind how much networks pay to get a big movie or former star to star in a new show. Recent history shows it hasn't been working at least in the sitcom world. Dramas seem to work out usually.

 

This has been NBC's M.O. since the Seinfeld era, yet how many of those shows have worked out?