A lot of the stuff isn't true in that theory, if you ignore the bit about the
plane not crashing and some of the conclusions he doesn't back up about the others, the
polar reversal stuff is interesting.
As for the breaks, a lot of the time its so they can cancel mid season one would assume, they make them in batches of 6-12... at this point in time, they won't have finished making season 2 yet.
There's a lot of insulting of the audience that go on, they don't seem to care about competant scheduling (
@ fox). They shuffle things round so they can lie about their viewing statistic to advertisers (delay until sweeps), they shuffle things around to try and get the ratings biased or get people to tune in to crap instead of their favourite shows.
It contrasts with the uk, where we make the series, and then we show the show consequtively. Shows are normally composed of 6 episodes to a series here though. They save up all the tv until xmas, where the viewing figures are higher (because its colder, obviously and more people stay in and watch tv).
Battlestar Gallactica and South Park i'm following, they both take extended "breaks", where they film the rest of the episodes. BSG is back in january. Can't wait, doing a Babylon 5 on us
Family Guy and Simpsons have shorter breaks too. I think it takes 6months to make an episode, but they do them at the same time (ie. they'll record the voice work consequetively and have a backlog of animation which is happening at the same time).
Very annoying that they don't make a series and then aired it.
ed2k: 
gonna try watching from start again as it started after picture went very blocky will report back in 40 min 