Does a show that starts in January and only has a 12-episode season....
... REALLY need a mid-season hiatus?
shareOn cable and in some other countries a lot of series do have mid-season breaks, "Doctor Who" is one example, ABC Family does it with some of their series the first part of the season is x.0 and the second half is x.5.
The most likely reason is that the first season was only 6 episodes and It was originally intended to be a six-part drama mini-series, It started it's production for the mini-series from September 12 to November 16, 2011.
Production on the first series had finished before the mini-series had even started airing, Global TV decided the day before the last episode aired on Global TV to do a second season.
They started production in September again last year around the same time they had started production on the mini-series in 2011,.
If you look at the number of weeks they're on hiatus they coincide with a break from November until after the first week of the new year. I wouldn't expect them to film during the holiday season.
The mini-series getting turned into a series was a last minute decision, I've seen some of the regular actors in other productions so it wasn't like they could just drop other projects they were doing to go start filming a project that most them most likely thought was going to be a mini-series and they moved onto other projects. I know Peter Outerbridge also makes regular guest appearances on "Nikita" that series starts filming in August and he was in the first two episodes for this season.
Jodi Balfour is also on the series "Primeval: New World" she was in the season premiere and her latest appearance just aired last week. She also has two movies coming out this year that were filmed last year according to IMDb the second film just finished post production back in January.
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Bomb Girls season 2 actually wrapped filming late last year, and I believe the latest Nikita episodes with Peter Outerbridge (3x12 and beyond) didn't start filming until January or February this year, so that can't really be the reason for the Bomb Girls mid-season break.
There were rumours a while ago that Global wanted to align the second part of season 2 with the season 2 air schedule on Reelz in the US, so that the last few episodes could air at the same time. Not sure that's really the reason, because Reelz only starts airing season 2 on March 27, and Global shows episode 2x07 on March 25.
I do know, however, that there was already talk about splitting the season in two around middle of last year, when Michael MacLennan mentioned it in an audio interview. Who knows why networks make these decisions? Probably has to do with predictions on how to score the best ratings with the number of episodes they have...
Though I agree that it's not all that uncommon for TV shows to have breaks in between. Most of the shows on USA Network have mid-season breaks (White Collar, Suits, Necessary Roughness), and they only have 16 episodes per season.
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Peter Outerbridge
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Peter Outerbridge was in the first two episode of "Nikita" which started season 3 back in October.
On February 7, 2012, Bomb Girls was renewed by Shaw Media for a second season consisting of 12 episodes. Why would they have finished doing season 2 if the series had not even been renewed, and the series was initially conceived as a mini-series and the ending wrapped like it was a mini-series.
I think you have their filming and production schedule wrong GlobalTV stated the following in a press release on their site on 9 August 2012..
Excerpt - TORONTO, Aug. 9, 2012 /CNW/ - Shaw Media announced the start of production on Season 2 of Bomb Girls, currently shooting 12 X 1-hour episodes in Toronto now until mid-December 2012. Last season, Bomb Girls made its indelible mark as the #1 new Canadian series, and the program will return to Global Television in the new year
The full article is here http://bit.ly/12t0sK7
If the series was conceived as a mini-series the cast and crew would have already made plans for other projects, and January and February are when most networks in the US film pilots and a lot of U.S. series are filmed in Canada so production crews and actors would need to be available for those productions, as I stated "Bomb Girls " was conceived as a mini-series that had already wrapped in late 2012, and everyone had moved onto other projects and the fact that they didn't decide to make it an ongoing series until the day before the last episode aired means they had to wait until the actors were available to start filming a second season.
If you look up the three production companies on IMDb you'll see a list of their productions and they did other productions between the "Bomb Girls" mini-series after they wrapped up those projects that is when they started production on the regular series of "Bomb Girls" in August,
When they wrapped up the mini-series everyone had moved on. The actors didn't have contracts for a series since it was just a mini-series and the decision to make it a ongoing series was a last minute decision.
Movies will make you famous; Television will make you rich; But theatre will make you good.
Wait a minute, I think we're talking about different things here. I have no idea how the contracts with the actors looked like past season one, but I can only imagine they must have built in something that would commit them to a possible extension. I'm quite sure that the makers of Bomb Girls were already plotting a possible season 2 as they were still writing season 1, even if it wasn't clear whether it was turning into more than a mini-series.
But I wasn't actually talking about season 1. I was referring to a link between the filming of Bomb Girls season 2 and the s2 mid-season break right now. I thought you were trying to point out that Global implemented the mid-season break so that the actors would have time to shoot something else during the break. Which in my opinion doesn't make sense, because filming of season 2 wrapped in late 2012, and Global could just as well have aired all 12 episodes in a row without a break, independent of whether the actors had other commitments in early 2013.
And you're right, Peter Outerbridge was in episodes 3x04 and 3x06 of Nikita. I don't actually know when those were shot, and it might have been around the time that Bomb Girls was still shooting last year. (Bomb Girls was shot between August and December 2012.) He might not be in every episode of those last six Bomb Girls s2 ones. I still don't see what that has to the mid-season break on Global. Or am I missing something here?
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Peter Outerbridge
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Wait a minute, I think we're talking about different things here. I have no idea how the contracts with the actors looked like past season one, but I can only imagine they must have built in something that would commit them to a possible extension. I'm quite sure that the makers of Bomb Girls were already plotting a possible season 2 as they were still writing season 1, even if it wasn't clear whether it was turning into more than a mini-series.
Two, if you look at the mini-series it ended as a mini-series. The decision to make it a series came a day before the final episode aired.
Nothing was in place to keep the actors, there have been many mini-series or television films that were later turned into regular series and had to re-cast actors because the actor or actor from the original production weren't available or weren't interested.
The series "The Client List" was a Lifetime movie and then they decided to make it a series, they re-cast most the actors except Jennifer Hewitt and Cybil Shepherd who is still playing the same type of character as she did in the television film.
Case in point Harry Dean Morgan stated in an interview he agreed to meet with the producers on "Magic City" because he thought it was a mini-series, he even stated in the interview that he told the producers he thought it was great they were doing a mini-series because no one does mini-series anymore in the U.S., it was during the meeting that they told him it would be an ongoing series and he told them he had other projects lined up, they obviously allowed him the time to do his other projects because that series got pushed to a summer series instead of a spring start like it did last year.
I travel for work and spend some time in the UK I actually agree with Morgan there are some projects that would be better served if they were just mini-series, and they do mini-series int eh UK a ll the time, and they also take long breaks sometimes between seasons of some of their series and no one complains.
But I wasn't actually talking about season 1. I was referring to a link between the filming of Bomb Girls season 2 and the s2 mid-season break right now. I thought you were trying to point out that Global implemented the mid-season break so that the actors would have time to shoot something else during the break. Which in my opinion doesn't make sense, because filming of season 2 wrapped in late 2012, and Global could just as well have aired all 12 episodes in a row without a break, independent of whether the actors had other commitments in early 2013.
They finished shooting the principle photography in December, they still have to do post production processing e.g. re-recording, sound editing etc. They didn't wrap all that up in 5 months.
They take break between filming for any number of reasons scheduling conflicts and other things that happen on a productions.
I worked in television production when I was in college on a soap opera and they always have delays for something, some things can be shot around but some things can't.
I saw the article about Meg Tliiy tweeting they were trying to have the program sync with Global TV in Canada and Reelz except Reelz will just be starting the first episode of season 2 starting Wednesday, March 27th, Global TV will be airing the second half of the season 2. So that doesn't make any sense either. Reelz will finish airing the first 6 episodes when Global TV finish airings the last episode of the regular series.
I don't think all the post-production was done to air all the episodes straight through. To do re-recording the actors have to come back in and read their dialogue there is just a lot to the post-production process and that's where a lot of things get delayed some actors don't always want to come back to do post-production things some can be nice about it, and others not so much.
Peter Outerbrdge isn't in every episode of the series "Bomb Girls" and the scenes he had were all very short ones so he wouldn't have been required to be on the set very long. Most series that premiere in the fall all start production in either late July or Early August.
That's the other thing that delays production other production companies using the same facilities not just for filming but for post-production processing.
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