A season premiere is the first episode of a new

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and pol ...

of a returning

television show A television show – or simply TV show – is any content produced for viewing on a television set which can be broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, or cable, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are typically placed betw ...

. In the United States, many season premieres are aired in the fall time or, for

mid-season replacement In American network television scheduling, a mid-season replacement is a television show that premieres in the second half of the traditional television season, usually between December and May. Mid-season replacements usually take place after a ...

s, either in the spring or late winter. In countries such as Australia and the UK, a season premiere can be broadcast at any time of the year. In Australia, the premieres of several shows are in mid- to late summer, late January or early February.

Mid-season premiere

In the 2000s, the terms "mid-season premiere" and "spring premiere" began being used by television broadcasters in the United States to denote the first episode after a mid-season

hiatus Hiatus may refer to: *Hiatus (anatomy), a natural fissure in a structure * Hiatus (stratigraphy), a discontinuity in the age of strata in stratigraphy *''Hiatus'', a genus of picture-winged flies with sole member species '' Hiatus fulvipes'' * Gl ...

, often following the

holiday season The Christmas season or the festive season (also known in some countries as the holiday season or the holidays) is an annually recurring period recognized in many Western and other countries that is generally considered to run from late November ...

leading into

spring Spring(s) may refer to: Common uses * Spring (season) Spring, also known as springtime, is one of the four temperate seasons, succeeding winter and preceding summer. There are various technical definitions of spring, but local usage of ...

and

summer Summer is the hottest of the four temperate seasons, occurring after spring and before autumn. At or centred on the summer solstice, the earliest sunrise and latest sunset occurs, daylight hours are longest and dark hours are shortest, wit ...

months. As with a season/series premiere, a mid-season premiere can include a major plot development, cast change, or resolution to a cliffhanger ending that featured in the "

mid-season finale A season finale (British English: last in the series; Australian English: season final) is the final episode of a season of a television program. This is often the final episode to be produced for a few months or longer, and, as such, will try t ...

" in order for networks to draw attention and encourage viewership of such episodes as

event television Event television (sometimes used in verb form as the buzzword "eventize") is a television network marketing concept which arose in the early 2010s and is characterized by a shift in priorities towards enticing audiences to watch programming immedia ...

. The practice has faced criticism for affecting the structure and narrative of broadcast television programs, as writers may be coerced by broadcasters into placing cliffhangers and plot developments within the midseason, rather than allow a plot to build up to a traditional season finale leading into a following season premiere.

References

Television terminology {{Tv-stub

Mid-season premiere

See also

References