TV Jots

The Number of Season Four Episodes, That Is

Advertising Age reports fairly dismal news today for fans of NBC’s struggling superpower drama Heroes, a show I haven’t watched in ages but that I enthusiastically championed when it premiered three seasons ago to instantaneous criticism. According to the industry publication’s sources, the network will probably snip the total number of episodes in the fourth season, reducing it from the current third season’s 25 to a low of 18 or 20.

The reasons offered for the cut include the new reality of continually shrinking audiences, hence lower ratings, for all television programs, which makes smaller budgets a necessity to counteract the decreased incoming advertising revenue.

There’s also been a recent trend among networks when it comes to expensive action-adventure series like ABC’s Lost and Fox’s 24, with the respective networks shortening seasons in order to both save money and ramp up viewer anticipation.

Heroes, however, is a bit different in some important respects when it comes to why the show’s ratings have declined so much, from 11.6 million on average before the 2008 writers strike to 7.7 million on average now. The far fewer fans who still remain have long noted Heroes‘ poor plotting and a lost sense of what the show is supposed to be about.

I personally wouldn’t know anymore because I stopped watching after the first several Season Three episodes. Once multiple characters began manifesting identical powers for no good reason, the ridiculous plot twists refused to smarten up and settle down, and Mohinder’s story arc got tragically stupid, I called it quits.

I’ll see what I haven’t been missing when the Season Four DVD set comes out. So, as far as I’m concerned, brilliant move on NBC’s part curbing the Heroes problem before it gets even more out of control.