Why the late start to the new TV season?

It looks as if "premiere week" (when most of the new shows premiere) will start Sept 25th this year. Last year it started on Sept 19th. More times than not it starts around mid-September. Some years it even started the week after Labor Day.

As a fan, it's frustrating waiting so late in September for the new shows.

Is there any reason why they couldn't have started on the 18th instead?

 

I'm guessing because the networks are cheap and they're trying to string out more low-cost reality shows, game shows, and other crap to avoid spending a lot more money on scripted dramas & comedies. I think they're also keenly aware of competition from non-broadcast channels like Netflix, Amazon, HBO, Showtime, AMC, FX, and so on.

 

Broadcast network teevee is in a tough position, IMHO. They're operating under a different set of standards than the cable nets play by. Plus, they're all owned by companies that also own cable networks, that also make money through advertising. Only the "Big 4/5"must still answer to community standards and FCC fines. I mean, the broadcast networks can put on any crap they want...but, to get it on the air, they still rely on the graces of the communities their affiliates are licensed to serve. They can't swear (at leasst, not egregiously), they can't depict actual mayhem in the realistic manner The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones can. They service an audience by the graces of the total potential audience served by network affiliates in all sized markets and all potentially-unforgiving psychographics and demographics groups who don't even expect to be enjoying their shows in the first place.

Imagine Baskin-Robbins requiring the approval of the entire community (even lactose-intolerant, allergy-laden, or vegans who won't consider their products anyway), in order to offer various flavors targeted to, say, the peanut-butter fan, or the graham-cracker enthusiast or extreme fudge palettes, and essentially have to reassure Grampa that don't worry, this new emphasis on candy pieces in their flavors won't have any effect on his ability to get Strawberry. And if there's an Asian portion of the community crabbing because there's no Green Tea flavored ice cream, or Black Sesame, being pushed to offer these flavors even if it spends the whole summer just wasting away in the corner freezer without even getting tried, in the off chance there's a taste for it.

So, if there's a chance more Grandmas will cheer for Little Amy Sackenstuffer belting out her Mom's record collection on a Star*Search-ish kind of show than a highly-well-written taut drama intended to open people's minds and show them a side of the world that doesn't fit in with Mayberry or even (gasp!) Mount Idy values, that'll set well with a certain portion of a network's audience they are loathe to program to, fearing they'll lose market share to Nagin and Jon Snow; well, let 'em have it just one more week. Long as the Flyover States can trust they'll still see "great television" once they've exhausted their supply of "better television", they might just leave the FCC alone for a few months while Dick Wolf scares the crap out of the urban demographic with tales of taudry tussles happening RIGHT OUTSIDE THEIR FRONT DOOR!!

But don't worry, zombie-phobes, we've got another 3 weeks of the back-season of the shows you really love, scheduled in equidistant runs throughout the summer, capped by a mini-marathon of the ones we just showed you while you were on vacation, so you can catch up on plotlines you really can't remember if they were actually happening, or was just a fever-dream from your last barbeque hangover; don't miss an episode or you'll miss out, then have to trust we accidentally run that one in the middle of the night in-between informaercials but still managing to log-jam both your 5-programs-at-once DVR's just because we "forgot" to tell your TiVo it's a rerun, just like we "forgot" to tell the audience there's yet another even bigger major marathon coming your way before Labor Day, so you have no excuse to be confused once we start up a whole new season afterwards, scheduled in evenly-spaced weeks of prime-number-length bursts, replaced occasionally with the "sister show" about the whole damn thing one more time, only shot through a night lens to make it creepier. And, dubbed in esparanto.

 

The concept of a 'new tv season' is increasingly becoming an archaic concept with the rise of streaming tv.

 

It seems like the new TV season has been starting later each year... The season starts later, there's less episodes per season, and the actual content of a half hour show is 21 minutes, as opposed to the 25 minutes they used to be...

 

Could it be ratings & sales initiatives? If the heavy hitter advertisers, let's just say Target, are spending most of their seasonal ad budget in November /early December the networks want to be able to tell sponsors their big hit show are scheduled deliver the maximum audience in that period.