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Ray Richmond is contributing to Deadline’s TCA coverage.
The question of whether the audience will return to NBC‘s apocalyptic first-year sci-fi drama Revolution when it comes back on March 25 from a four-month layoff took center stage during the series’ TCA morning session. NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt earlier this morning expressed confidence that the absence of new episodes since November 26 wouldn’t hurt the show. In fact exec producers J.J. Abrams and Eric Kripke maintained that they welcomed the break to avoid diluting viewers’ attention with reruns and give them uninterrupted fresh product 
for nine consecutive weeks upon Revolution‘s return. “When we were doing Lost, that (kind of scheduling) helped us enormously,” Abrams said. “So when the idea came up for Revolution I was really relieved. I thought, and still think, that it will get us to a place where it will be the best possible way for the viewer to watch the show.” Kripke agreed, pointing out that this kind of broadcast plan already seems to work pretty well as a model for cable originals. “It also supplied us a natural break point between the season’s first half and second half,” he said, “and the second half sort of lives as its own continuous piece.”
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Having so much time off also allowed the production team to “really take a breath, look at what we’d done, really analyze it, and make adjustments,” Kripke added. “Usually, you’re in such triage from beginning to end.” Having the luxury to step back and assess the first half without having to scramble to shoot the season’s second half also afforded the Revolution team the time to assess some of the show’s weaknesses. “We learned that we did a lot of things right,” Kripke said, “but we also saw that we could pick up the pace of the stunning revelations. Maybe the pace of the shocking surprises was a little too slow during the first half.” Kripke also came to view the show through a classic television prism this morning, dubbing it “The Waltons with swords.” You can watch a 2nd season preview below:
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What NBC just did to Revolution is what killed Jericho on CBS. You cannot pull a series for four months and expect viewers will return. I don’t watch anything on NBC, so I will miss any promos run to remind me to return. Many people will just start watching something else in that time slot and not return. Some will DVR it and watch it later. Either way it will hurt the show’s ratings and chances of success. I won’t say survival, as this is probably their highest rated scripted TV show, so I believe it gets renewed unless NBC’s tactics causes it to crash and burn.
ABC did this with FlashForward and NBC did this before, with The Event and Heroes. NBC finally gets a ratings winner in Revolution–an hour-long genre show at that–and they bench it. I don’t get the logic.
Their supposed logic behind this move is to have Revolution return when the next series of The Voice begins. Which to me is like saying that you don’t think this show can stand on its own without The Voice as a lead-in.
tomko44, you just answered your own post.
I disagree, seeing this promo made me want to see it more. Breaking Bad, Lost, Justified and 24 have all done this. it’s fine.
Revolution is NO Breaking Bad, Lost, or 24. Apples to Red Velvet Cake–no comparison.
If people can remember when to return to shows with long hiatuses like The Walking Dead people won’t have a problem returning to Revolution either. I expect the show will get good ratings when it returns in March.
People return for The Walking Dead, They return last year for Game of thrones, Once upon a time is with big hiatus too, but people return so they will return and for Revolution. Revolution is already big hit, best new show with towers. As Rolling Stone
magazine wrote:
“Revolution makes other shows look small-time.”
First NBC drama hit from 10 years… if not more.
Cable an network TV work on completely different business models. USA, AMC and the other Cable networks are known for their split seasons and starting their series during the “Off Seasons”. Premium Cable Networks heavily promote their shows in advance of their airing so you know when they will be on (and they show multiple airings of the same episode). Ratings for even hit shows on Cable are usually lower than the ratings that get network shows canceled. TWD is an exception, not the rule. Oh… and I watched Once Upon a Time tonight, and there is a big difference in a few weeks in hiatus and four months.
Those examples have/had long hiatuses between seasons, not within seasons. I think the audience is more receptive to returning to a show when it’s an actual seasonal break and they realize the show will be back “next year” vs. a network-forced break. Breaks within a season can cause audience attention to wander and fans not clued in online (yes, there are some), may just think the show was cancelled or move on and not return.
Side Q — saw a Twitter comment that Kripke didn’t mention SPN by name in this panel when he referred to it. I’d always thought he left on his own/amicably. Was that not the case?
Actually you are mistaken. The recent break in The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad are within the same season.
It’s silly they invented a device to kill electricity and they lost control of it? To the point that it went global? Absurd. A flawed premise to start with and the show should end after these 9 episodes it’s getting repetitive with all the sword fights. Wrap it up and give another show the slot something that has potential to go 100 episodes.
People are forgetting the fact that shows such as The Event and FlashForward long hiatus wasn’t the main problem. Viewers for those shows were exponentially dropping and showed no sign of consistency long before their hiatus began.
Revolution is different, people actually watch the show and consistently outperform it’s competition plus it’s always a big gainer in live + 7 ratings -it’s averaging about 5.0 and 12 million viewers and that’s huge for a 10pm show. Revolution feels like a “real hit”. The Voice is still it’s lead-in and will benefit the show, and I’m quite certain NBC will have a big marketing push promoting the return of their biggest shows this season.
This is actually a very smart strategy. It can work if the show is a big enough hit and people want to see it. Revolution was different from the Event and Flash Forward in that respect (although Flash Forward got much better as it went forward). Personally, I would rather watch it uninterrupted with no repeats. I hate how you will get maybe 4 weeks of new shows and then 2 or 3 repeats followed by 3 or 4 new shows and a second set of repeats before a series takes you into their final batch of episodes with the usual shows.
NBC will promote the hell out of this and it will almost be like a 2nd season premiere for the show.
Revolution does not belong on Network TV. If the world was really to lose electricity every where, it would be a very gruesome event. No food for anyone after 10 days because of loss of refrigeration, no transportation system, weather, so on and so on, only the truly strong would make it, there would be no law period anywhere, well yes the law of survival. Put this show on Cable, don’t break the season, give us 10 real good shows a season, with yes all the nudity violence that would be life with no electricity. This show is to squeaky clean, the imagery is to clean looking, even the people are to clean, (no electricity – mean no water filtration or pumps to bring water to people, sit down with some social engineers, think this out better, get more gritty like it really would be.
I remember back in the good old days, when television seasons ran for 30 weeks or more and the “Christmas break” (if one existed at all) was just that, a TWO-WEEK hiatus (excluding Olympic years). This two- to four- month business is a show-killer. Someone above mentioned Flash Forward, and that was a perfect example of a really intelligent and entertaining television show that was really gaining momentum; however, after a two- or three-month break, the ratings went down the drain and it was cancelled. Idiot networks. Maybe they should just readjust their thinking and make every season only 13 CONSECUTIVE weeks.
FF had a huge drop in ratings before the hiatus. It started at 12.5 million, last episode before the hiatus was barely over 7 million. Sure, it dropped more after that but the writing was already on the wall.
A 30 week season starting in september with a two week break for christmas would end at the end of march, two months before may sweeps. And most shows only do about 22-24 episodes a year. So what are the options?
1) Lots of one or two week breaks with reruns (works OK for comedy but not so great for serialized shows, and in general people are less and less willing to watch reruns)
2) Extra long season – a few shows can squeeze out a few more than 26 but it’s hard to think of shows that went 30 or more.
3) Split season – seems to work well on cable networks like USA but fewer successes on broadcast
4) Run the whole season together, which means a september start ends in January, or start in January. 24 comes to mind as well as one of the seasons of Alias (which was the highest rated season), as well as the last three seasons of Lost.
Personally, I like option 4 with the January start for serial type shows.
Love the concept but hate the execution. Please tell me why, oh brilliant producers, characters in a post-apocalyptic world are well-coiffed, nicely groomed, cleanly-clothed, well-fed, fully-teethed catalogue models? QUIT INSULTING OUR INTELLIGENCE and hey – we may watch more.
If they just called the March episodes “Season 2″ would we even be having this discussion?
A most excellent point. Personally speaking, my family and I WILL be “returning” in March.