Unravelling the mystical art of scheduling

Posted: 30-03-08

With fans’ queries about what happened to Curb Your Enthusiasm and My Name is Earl, joining the C4 already huge mail bag and plenty of forum discussions about when everything from Shipwrecked to Ugly Betty are back on air, the Viewers’ Editor wanted to know more about how scheduling works.
She concludes that it’s a pretty tricky balancing act and, much as they’d love to, schedulers just can’t please all the people all the time.
Do you agree? Comment below or join the forum discussion.

Channel 4 receives more comments and questions about scheduling than any other topic – in the past four months alone around 3,200 of the Viewer Enquiries’ mailbag related to scheduling. Many are enquiries about when the next series of a programme will begin. With the writers’ strike in America leading to many of the top imports being delayed, it’s not really surprising that the most enquired about shows were the US hits: Desperate Housewives; Ugly Betty; Without a Trace; Brothers and Sisters; and One Tree Hill.

The unexpected disappearance of a programme will also prompt a flurry of comments, as happened last week with the apparent disappearance of Curb Your Enthusiasm from More 4 on Monday evening. The scheduler for More 4 was happy to spend some time chatting to me about this particular incident and the joys and trials of scheduling more generally. He started by explaining that scheduling was part analysis, based on a lot of data on different audiences and their viewing patterns, and part instinct, based on being able to predict what sort of viewers would enjoy a programme before it had been transmitted.

Curb Your Enthusiasm was originally scheduled to run for 10 consecutive weeks at 10.30pm on Monday nights, as schedulers will always aim to run a series uninterrupted in the same slot. More 4 had also commissioned On That Day as part of the Iraq 5th anniversary season, and when it became clear that it was a good companion to the Nick Broomfield film Battle for Haditha, shown on Channel 4 at 9pm on Monday 17 March, a decision was taken to broadcast it in the 10.30 pm slot on More 4, so viewers could switch over to watch it immediately after Battle for Haditha. This resulted in the final two episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm being delayed for two weeks to allow for the Iraq programme and an evening of Peter Kay programmes on Bank Holiday Monday. These changes were agreed in time to publish them in all the listings, but some viewers were clearly still taken by surprise to find that another programme was in the 10.30 pm slot for those two weeks.

In some instances, a show will be commissioned at very short notice, causing schedule changes to be made after listings information has been published, as was the case with the Cutting Edge documentary Shannon Matthews: The Family's Story broadcast at 9pm on Thursday 20 March, six days after her reappearance. This caused the start of the new season of My Name is Earl to be delayed by a week, which was also the subject of several comments and complaints this week. In these cases, the scheduler’s priority will be to rehouse the ousted programme into the nearest suitable slot and announce the new slot on air at the original transmission time.

You can’t help feeling a bit sorry for the schedulers, as they’re caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, like all broadcasters, Channel 4 likes to keep the schedule flexible, so programming stays fresh and topical, while on the other hand, schedulers have to keep the die-hard fans of so many different series happy. Every scheduler knows it is frustrating for fans not knowing exactly when their favourite shows are back on air, but equally they don’t want to get everyone’s hopes up by promising a timeslot several months in advance, just to dash them when, close to d-day, matters beyond their control mean it has to be delayed a week or so. It’s a pretty tricky balancing act.

Would you rather know what’s coming up way in advance and risk being disappointed by a delay just before launch, or is it more exciting to be kept in suspense and then be given an exact date closer to time that’s almost certain?
Add your comments below.

Before adding your comment below, please note the terms and conditions upon which all submissions are made to Channel 4.