From Script to Screen – Part 2

It’s finally here, with filming having started on Monday this feels like the right time to start talking about what the schedule might look like. If this was any other year, season 11 would have already premiered and episode 3 would be airing tonight. In part 1, I considered how long it takes to make an episode. Part 2 is looking at what determines when episodes can be added to the TV schedules, and why there will then be gaps between new episodes.

Originally this was going to be called ‘Why Do They Show So Many Repeats?’, as I had the idea to write it during season 10. At that point, it was going to be a breakdown of the filming timescales and why that meant reruns were shown every season. As fans, we all look forward to a new episode of a show we enjoy, so it can be disappointing to realise that it’s a repeat instead of a new episode. However, with the current situation, there’s another reason to think about why this happens. In addition to the number of reruns that will be shown during season 11, there’s the question of how long we might have to wait to see new episodes now that filming has started.

Both of these posts are an attempt to breakdown the reason schedules look like they do; it’s all a matter of timing.

Season Timeline

In any other year, a season of Blue Bloods will film between mid-July and mid-April, it takes about 35 weeks to film a season. Episodes typically air from the end of September through to early May, so it takes 33 weeks to show the full season. It makes sense that it takes about as long to show the episodes as it does to film them. As there are typically only 22 episodes in a season, it means there will always be 11 weeks where there’s no new episode available. This gives an idea of why there are gaps but doesn’t necessarily explain why we’ll see a batch of new episodes before they start to be shown in ones and twos.

Shape of a Season

As previously said, filming starts around mid to late July, and from then they only stop for the holidays. This means that when the season premieres they are normally filming episode 7, and they will be working on episode 14 by the Christmas break. Most years, the last Friday of September starts the season with a bang. This begins a run of eight new episodes which are shown every week until Thanksgiving. By already having the first 7 episodes filmed when they start on TV everything is ready to show on a weekly basis. Once they pause for Thanksgiving there are 25 weeks until the end of the season but only fourteen episodes still to be shown. This is part of the reason why they then start to break it up with repeats, although it isn’t only a matter of spreading out the remaining episodes, there’s also the practical matter of getting the episodes ready.

We know that when the season premieres they are normally filming the seventh episode; but are filming the thirteenth episode when episode 10 is shown on TV in December. During those two months, they’ve gone from being 6 episodes ahead to only 3 episodes ahead. It’s easy to see that they would reach a point where there weren’t any episodes ready to be shown if they were to attempt to air new episodes every week, the only way to avoid that would be if they waited a lot longer to premiere the new season. The simple reason for this is that it takes longer than a week to film an episode.

The Race to Keep Ahead of the Air-date

The main dates from last season are a useful example to help clarify how they start to have less time between episodes finishing and the previous episodes being aired. After Christmas is when things feel most sporadic, in January 2020 the 11th episode of season 10 was shown on Friday 3rd, and two days later filming finished on the 14th episode. This continued with the 12th episode shown on Friday 10th and filming finishing six days later on the 15th episode. New episodes are shown intermittently because if they attempted to show new episodes throughout January, they would end up without enough time for episodes to be completed. This is because it would lead to less time available for post-production, so they could be in a position where episode 15 would have to be prepared for TV within 8 working days, 5 days for episode 16 and potentially only 3 days for episode 17. The shortest time between filming completing and an episode being shown is typically when they get to the end of the season. For season 9’s Something Blue, they finished filming on 16 April and it aired on 11 May, only 3 and a half weeks later.

What This Might Mean For Season 11

This raises the question of what the show might be able to do now that filming has started. In 2019 the filming began for season 10 on 18 July; this year they’ve started on 5 October, eleven weeks later than last year, which is equivalent to about seven episodes.
It feels unlikely that they’ll have quite so many episodes filmed by the time the first episode of season 11 is aired, but that means we need to be prepared for more frequent reruns throughout the season. CBS has indicated that they expect to start airing their fall shows in November. Based on this my suspicion is that the season will premiere just before Thanksgiving by which time they might be filming the 5th episode at that time. This could mean that they’d be in a position to show two more episodes in December with a few more in January.

There is an element of guesswork as restrictions may extend the production timeline beyond the standard 8 days. Currently, the signs seem positive for episode 1. Based on the cast and crew’s description of filming they’ve had an efficient setup, and it should mean that any adaptions haven’t drastically altered the filming schedule.