NBC Plans To Bring Back ‘Heroes’ for Fourth Season
NBC entertainment president Angela Bromstad said the network is planning to bring Heroes back for a fourth season, adding that plans are to order 18-20 episodes of the show for next season.
Despite a drop in ratings this season, the show is still tied with The Office as the network’s top-rated series among adults 18-49 this season.
The network is also considering Jesse Alexander’s pilot project Day One, about a group of survivors in the wake of a catastrophic global event, as a companion piece to Heroes, hoping the popularity of Heroes could help a new series like Day One find an audience, especially if it airs as part of the same Monday night block.
"Day One is a big event and we’re looking at that to come into the Heroes spot," Bromstad said. "It’s right now being looked at as a 13-episode run — something people could commit to and we could make a big splash with."
Bromstad also cited the show’s global popularity as working in Heroes favor. "Every single place you go has heard about Heroes — whether you’re in China or Japan or Russia," she said. "And to me, that is global content."
The network has privately discussed setting a series end date for Heroes, which has worked in the favor of the quality of shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica. But even if NBC ever made such a move, Bromstad said, they wouldn’t want to make next season the conclusion.
Of course, this is not yet an “official” renewal, but barring any drastic ratings drop, the show seems safe for renewal at this point.
Via The Live Feed
March 5th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Only 18-20 episodes? Isn’t that less than a full season?
March 6th, 2009 at 7:23 am
A standard full season has been around the 24 episode mark. Hopefully a 18-20 episode season would cause the writers to create just 1 chapter with one decent story arc like with the first season.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:56 am
18-20 episodes is better than none at all.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
I agree that 18-20 episodes is better than none at all, but it does strike me as strange. Why would you have 4-6 less episodes? Maybe the season won’t start till January? (like Lost)
March 16th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
that would be really cool if they incorporated heroes with that new show, day one. cool little crossover series…
March 27th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
they probably think ordering less episodes will force the writers to have a faster-paced story line as to not confuse any of the viewers that don’t have any attention span and want nothing but FLASH AND BANG.
April 9th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Not to mention that 18-20 episodes don’t cost as much…
I always thought that American shows had too many episodes, though. Some shows can pull it off, but for the most part I think they’re just too long - easy for people to lose interest by the end of the season, have to wait a ridiculous amount of time for the finale, and often put up with mid-season hiatuses… The average in the UK seems to be 10-15 episodes - the arguably “biggest” (popularity-wise) show on the BBC only gets 13 episodes a season, with a Christmas special. Works perfectly, unless they try to cram too much over-arching plot into one season, which they’ve done.