Since kicking off its latest season, South Park has been riding a wave of success with the season 27 premiere pulling in strong viewership figures and creating endless social media buzz. The season’s unapologetic commentary on President Donald Trump, his close advisors, and MAGA supporters has been making headlines and again proven that the show’s satire is among the best in TV.
Fans can’t get enough of the season and it seems they’re going to get to enjoy new episodes for much longer than anticipated courtesy of an unexpected schedule shift from Comedy Central.
Instead of burning through the show’s 10-episode season, Comedy Central has adopted a new rollout schedule in the show’s first few weeks which has seen the show airing a new episode and then taking a week off. Well, this schedule plan has worked out so well in the first few weeks that it seems Comedy Central has decided to implement it for the entire season!
As first reported by Deadline, Comedy Central will be airing new episodes of South Park every other week rather than airing episodes weekly. This new week-on/week-off schedule will mean new episodes of South Park will air well into the final months of the year with the current expectation being that the season finale won’t air until December 10!
“We’re not going to argue with what’s working. The numbers are great, the show is getting a lot of attention — if they want to give us a 20-week season for 10 episodes, that’s OK,” an insider told Deadline of the schedule shift.
It’s an interesting strategy that is indeed paying off nicely for the show. After the season 27 premiere pulled in 5.9 million viewers in its first three days, the second episode built upon the premiere audience with 6.2 million viewers following its first three days of release.
The topical stories of the season which have taken aim at President Trump through brilliant satirical takes, have proven that even 27 seasons in South Park knows how to create conversation and keep audiences engaged. Keeping that momentum going over a longer period of time is such a smart move for Comedy Central and its parent company, Paramount.
Rather than the season running uninterrupted and ending in early September, Comedy Central’s updated schedule will keep the show on through December. Doing so gives the show the chance to continue addressing the most topical moments unfolding and keep fans talking about the show for months to come.
While we’d love to get episodes weekly, the week-on/week-off model is working wonders for the show and that week break between episodes is only making fans more excited when the new episodes do drop. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and that’s certainly proving to be the case for South Park!