The spin‐off as television program form and strategy

The spin‐off program, defined as “a new program derived from an existing one, usually through the appropriation of characters, “ has been used frequently as a primetime network television scheduling strategy since the 1960s. Implicit in the scheduling of spin‐off programs is the belief that they have a greater chance of success than non‐spin‐offs because the audience is already familiar with the characters and/or the situational aspects of the program. The purpose of this paper is to test this implied proposition through statistical analysis.