Down with the traditional TV season

We’re about two months from the end of the 2025-26 TV season, which will wrap up a few days before Memorial Day. Unless, that is, you want to count the 52-week season, in which case you’ll have to wait a little under four months.

The idea of a September-to-May season by which networks measure themselves against each other is older than commercial TV itself. All sorts of rhythms that we (well, anyone old enough to remember the pre-streaming era) associate with the way television works are tied to it, from the announcement of next year’s schedules in May to the crush of shows premiering in the first week or two of fall.

It also, in this year of our lord 2026, makes no damn sense anymore.

The construct of the TV season is an entirely artificial one, and the places where the largest number of us actually watch things now — streaming services — pay it little or no mind. Beyond some hidebound traditions, there’s not a reason to just line up the TV calendar with the actual calendar. And, speaking as someone who has received corporate spin on ratings performance for ages, it would be probably harder for media companies to weasel around and say that no, actually, we did great this season year, and that would be excellent news for me and the other folks who cover that aspect of the business.

First, some history, and then the argument for scrapping the old way of doing things.

Depending on the source you consult, there are a couple reasons for the fall-to-spring TV season. The first is that the two oldest broadcasters, CBS and NBC, did it that way before television was even a thing: They started as radio networks, and their programming was on a 39-week schedule from fall to spring, with replacement shows in the summer.

One reason for that? It let the stars and executives behind those radio shows get away from New York (where both were based) in the summer, no small thing in the days before air conditioning was widespread. When CBS, NBC and ABC (which was founded in the 1940s) transitioned to TV, they kept to that schedule, even as most TV production eventually moved to Los Angeles.

Another oft-cited (including in this 2012 New York Times story) reason for TV seasons starting in the fall is that’s when automakers would roll out their new model years, and since they were such big advertisers, it made sense for networks to align their launches with those of Ford, GM and Chrysler. (Seriously, ask your Gen X or older relatives what a seemingly big deal a new car model year was back then.)

Related to that, the ritual of the upfronts started in the 1960s: That’s the week in May when networks announce their schedules for the next season and preview their forthcoming shows and live events, all to entice advertisers to buy commercial time up front (hence the name).

So a cadence was set. Pilots were shot in the spring, around the same time already airing series were wrapping up their production for the season. Networks decided what to renew and cancel by May when they announced their lineups, and then everyone took some time off before writers went back to work and production started back up in the summer. Reruns, burnoffs of canceled shows and the occasional experiment would air in the summer, when people watched less TV.

As cable networks started to make their own shows in the 1990s and early 2000s, some were able to exploit that dead time and successfully launch some big shows: The Larry Sanders Show, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, The Closer, Burn Notice and Mad Men all initially premiered in the summer. Broadcast networks eventually noticed and started programming more in the summer too — they experimented with scripted series on and off through the 2000s and much of the 2010s before settling on mostly unscripted shows that filled (and continue to fill) about a third of their primetime schedules in the summer.

Then streaming came along, offering users the ability to watch the entire runs of Gilmore Girls or Friends or whatever, but also a steady release pattern of original shows throughout the year. The idea of an overarching season (as opposed to the fixed run of an individual series, also called a season on this side of the Atlantic) means basically nothing to the Netflixes and Disneys Plus of the world.

Streaming, by the way, now accounts for almost half of all TV viewing in the United States, more than network and cable combined most months. Yet even they go through the upfronts song and dance now that they sell ads too.

If they chose to, networks and streamers — several of whom are part of the same giant media companies already — could just decide to align the TV year with the calendar year, and they wouldn’t even have to change much.