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The worst are the various documentary murder shows. There is not much to the story, so not only do they have cliff-hangers before commercial breaks, but they also recap the previous segment for like half the next segment. It's comical. It's like they heard the common talk-giving advice "tell them what you're gonna tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them."

The Gift Shop Sketch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MFtl2XXnUc

I used to love watching Myth Busters but it became so much like that it was ridiculous. There was a time you could download torrents of Myth Busters episodes with all the recaps removed.

I used to like those when they first appeared just as a new series catch up. Then it got utterly pointless and self-parody with weekly and break catch ups and coming soon teasers. Even news progs joined in. How to save 5+ minutes of programme making with real time repeats.

There are torrents of totally recut Mythbusters with all these crappy bits cut out. It's so much better

Oh man I can relate to this. Tried watching a murder show on Netflix and I swear half the content was just rehashing of the other half. Come to think of it, this is how most books are written - 10% value, -90% filler.

Cliff-hangers long predate modern television, and seem to be endemic to any serialized content. The term itself dates back to the late 1800s, and it’s use has been derided in every medium from books to radio to film to television.

It also wasn’t a purely American thing. Go watch some of the old black-and-white Dr. Who episodes, for example; you’ll see some prime examples of cliffhanger- and recap-dominated television.

The exception seems to be late-20th-century television shows, where the syndication system meant that episodes might be dropped or reordered arbitrarily by the local station. This made it difficult to impossible to have any kind of changing circumstances like an overarching plot except at big events like season breaks. Star Trek: TNG is a good example here; the interpersonal relationships between characters don’t really evolve very much, and when they do it’s part of a season-break spanning two-part story. Those reliably had every character in danger at the break to provide the studio leverage during contract negotiations.

As the premium television channels started getting into producing their own shows, they didn’t have the problem of local affiliates reshuffling their schedule— their distribution model let shows have an overall plot, but they still add to be acceptable for viewers that expected to get a whole story each week. This gave us shows like Stargate SG-1 which still had very formulaic episodes, but also a continuity between them.

You also started to have the national networks assert more control over the local stations which led to some successful attempts at shows with both series- and episode-long plot structures, like Babylon 5 & the West Wing. Vestiges of the old system remained for quite a while, though, and is a large part of why Firefly was never commercially successful— it was produced with continuity from episode to episode in mind, but the network aired them in a seemingly random order instead.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliffhanger

Don't remember any catch up recaps ever appearing in the old B&W Dr Who, and I've seen plenty. Cliff hangers certainly. Yet those were memorable because they were relatively rare. In those days they were not used in every episode of every drama, or soap on British TV, far from it. Now they're everywhere, turned up to 11 to a point of self-parody like the Mitchell and Webb Gift Shop skit linked.

Most episodes would reach something more akin to a convenient place to pause - more like the reel break and intermission in old movies. Reach a local conclusion for whatever episode story was playing out, pick it up with a new episode arc next week, alongside continuing the character development and series arcs.

Interesting US network background I wasn't aware of. I'm fascinated by the idea networks would play series out of order, which on the face of it seems incredibly dumb. They're all the same length. Surely out of order would hurt the local station too, by losing viewers and potentially advertisers when stuff stops making sense?

> I'm fascinated by the idea networks would play series out of order, which on the face of it seems incredibly dumb.

Part of the issue was that show production was pipelined and unreliable. It sometimes happened that the “next” episode wasn’t ready in time for air but a later one was, and the network would rather show something new than a repeat. The show producers and writers knew this, too, so a style developed that didn’t include any long-term character development- each episode was a self-contained short story instead of a chapter in a novel.

This meant that, in the off season, local stations felt free to pick and choose individual episodes based on ratings without regard for anything else which further reinforced the style of having at least one self-contained story in each episode, which persisted long after the original constraints were lifted.

I only ever saw the US edits of the old Dr. Who shows, so the recaps may have been added to help it fit into the local TV mindshare.

Interesting. It starts to make sense of why so much US tv was entirely stand alone episodes, which did exist in the UK, but fairly uncommon except in sit-coms. The UK had the broadcasters, even the commercial ones, making the programmes, so they were wedded to scheduling in the programme making. External production companies and studios came much later, 80s or 90s I think. Presumably they stuck to fairly rigid contracts about order, or broadcast after all x episodes of the series were made, after those changes came in, they certainly had a long history of managing in order.

The UK experience was more how you describe Babylon 5 etc - a show plot that concluded with the episode, but theme and character development across the series. Even the classics from the 70s and 80s. Some were so smooth a transition it actually did seem like getting a glimpse a week later, rather than an artificially exciting episode. To modern eyes that looks pretty dull, though that's partly camera and production techniques too, yet did seem to allow smoother development.

I also get the impression that US shows were commissioned in longer runs— a typical season was 22 shows a year, delivered weekly, so it was impractical to plot out everything in advance. On any given day, the actors might be doing scenes for several different episodes based on location availability while contract writers were pitching unwritten episode ideas for later in that same season.

Ah yeah, that's also true. Typical UK season now is 6, 8 or 10. A few decades ago 13 was probably the commonest. I know many are made out of order, even shorter ones, to tie with locations, sets etc.

Dr Who was actually quite the exception there with 26 and even more in the earliest years! US seems to be 15 or unbelievable. They start to feel too long, even shows I enjoy, or perhaps ideas or budget get spread too thin, especially in 2nd and subsequent seasons.

You also started to have the national networks assert more control over the local stations which led to some successful attempts at shows with both series- and episode-long plot structures, like Babylon 5 & the West Wing.

That’s not what happened.

There are two reasons why serialized shows were not popular on network TV until recently.

Syndication - the networks always had control over what got sued during prime time. But they also made most of their money via syndication outside of prime time and with the cable channels. It’s really hard to syndicate serialized shows for the second reason...

If you miss either the first few episodes of a serialized show or miss an episode in between, you probably wouldn’t even bother about watching it. Now with video on demand via streaming the TV networks can tell the audience to catch up by going to the website/going to their cable providers VOD offerings, etc.

Netflix - serialized shows are very popular on Netflix where binge watching is a thing. Even the cable channels that buy syndication rights can also offer catchup/and video on demand.

Most ads can be categorised into two 1) Prescription pills and 2) The same GEICO-style-oddly-snarky-supposed-to-be-funny-but-not-really. It’s infuriating. HBO and Netflix are pioneers in this regard. I hope those two at least remain that way.

Ads perform better when they stand out. It's easier to stand out by being terrible in some visible and unique way than by being excellent in some visible and unique way.

See: the 'Head-on' advertising strategy.

Even star trek had some cliffhangers and unanswered questions at the end of seasons

As I recall, the primary reason for end-of-season cliffhangers was for leverage in contract negotiations. Actors have a harder time arguing that they are indispensable when the viewers’ last shot was of their character in mortal peril.