• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, December 3, 2015

You have to wonder about ABC’s recent on-air marketing campaign for its mid-season winter finales: “Live Viewing is Advised.”

The message from the network is this: These are important episodes that shouldn’t be viewed, in, say, late December or early January, but as soon as possible -- best live.

Surely, “live” is how we all watch the Super Bowl and and other sports -- and maybe important episodes of reality competition shows like “The Voice” or “Dancing With The Stars.” Live viewing “feels” more important for many -- in theory.

ABC has been doing fairly well at maintaining decent viewing numbers this fall without big “live” sport programming, versus NBC and CBS, who do have prime-time NFL programming (Fox also gets some credit here for having its late afternoon Sunday games spill over into prime time).

ABC’s efforts to promote live prime-time viewing of non-sports shows is contrary to what other TV networks are doing by placing a growing value on time-shifted viewing.

Fox went a step further went it recently announced it will no longer be releasing live plus same day ratings, only releasing much more inclusive live program plus other time-shifted viewings -- up to three, seven, and 30 days.

At the same time, networks have begun airing live musicals, starting with NBC's big results from "The Sound Of Music Live" two years ago. This holiday season NBC will be doing “The Wiz”; in January Fox will air a live version of “Grease.”

In addition to this, NBC made an unusual decision to air a full season of its Friday half-hour comedy, “Undateable” live all this year.

At the same time, TV networks, looking to perhaps to cover their bases, have used some on-air promos directing viewers to record a show for later viewing if they were unable to watch it live.

Confused? TV networks want you to watch by any means, at any time. And they’ll continue to remind you of all those and other new TV behaviors.