Midseason finale? Just show the whole thing

“Stay tuned for scenes from next week’s midseason finale of (insert your favorite TV show here).”

Midseason? Finale? Didn’t the season just begin?

Yeah, it kinda did. In some cases, hour- long TV shows announcing their “midseason finale” are only a few weeks into their new season.

“The Walking Dead” midseason finale on Dec. 11 was its eighth episode, halfway through its 16-episode season. It will start back in February, end in late March. “Empire” made it to nine episodes before its midseason finale on Dec. 14; again, halfway through an 18-episode season.

But why do so many shows say they’re halfway through the season when the season seems to have just begun? Blame cable.

For decades, NBC, CBS and ABC had to fill the weeks between September and June with fresh programming. Generally, between 22 and 30 episodes a year were produced.

Then cable networks, which primarily had been airing movies and older, syndicated shows, jumped in with their own series — AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad”; FX’s “Justified” and “The Shield”; the fire- breathing dragon of them all, HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”

Cable didn’t have to adhere to broadcast networks’ September- June calendar. It could air a season whenever it seemed best to f ind an audience. Nor did it have to pro-Shawn Ryan

duce 20- plus episodes. Two of cable’s most-awarded shows — “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” — only had 13-episode seasons, a number that became something of a cable standard.

Even more importantly, many of these shows were winning Emmys, l anding magazine covers and TV interviews.

Still, even cable needs to jack up ratings and, in turn, advertising rates. And so we come back to “midseason finales.” Nothing like a cliffhanger to make people watch ( big ratings), then return again when the new shows crank up again (hopefully, big ratings again).

Broadcast TV is forced to follow. It’s trying to make its shows edgier to compete with cable, but mostly failing since the Federal Communications Commission will only allow broadcast to go so far. But broadcast saw that “midseason finales” helped cable shows, so it’s tagging along like a little brother, yelling, “Hey, wait up!”

So in broadcast and cable, viewers must wait for their shows to come back, not just in summer but in winter, too.