Repeats

[RASPUTINS-DOG]

Whenever you look across the weeks tv schedule there are without doubt a huge number of repeated shows..
Are they obliged to repeat a show or is it merely lack of new shows being made.
Some films are repeated at a ridiculous amount of times when others are never seen again...

[Buenchico]

With rise of advertising on the internet and via social media, the total TV advertising revenue available to commercial stations has fallen dramatically. Further, it has come at the same time as the number of channels available has greatly increased; so each channel only gets a small share of what's on offer. ITV1 for example, now only receives around 10% (in real terms) of the revenue that it had when Channel 4 was its only commercial rival. That's why it can no longer to afford to either make many new programmes or to buy in the rights to many new(ish) films.

The BBC has similar budget constraints, with the Government freezing the TV licence but, at the same time, placing the burden of paying for BBC World Service (which was previously funded separately) upon licence payers.

Film distributors sell their offerings to TV stations in 'bundles'. So, in order to buy in the (often very limited) broadcasting rights to blockbuster movies, they also have to buy (much less limited) rights to lesser movies. So the A-movies get shown just a few times but the B-movies, that they are forced to buy, get shown far more often.

[Old_Geezer]

Lesson for today. One may have 2 to 5 channels of adequate TV or countless channels of repeated garbage, but not the best of both. If society swallows the 'choice is king' , and 'you must pay directly for what you get' arguments, then it loses what it had and gets the TV it voted for.

[VHG]

When I was growing up we had 2 channels, BBC and ITV. Then they added BBC2 so we had three.

But these channels did not run all day, we had no breakfast TV for example, there was not much on during the day, and channels often shut down at midnight or just after.

So they did not need repeats to fill the air waves, as there was not much time to fill.

Nowadays I have Sky, and I could not tell you how many channels I have access to but it is probably 300 or 400.

And many of these channels run for 24 hours so there is a LOT of channels to fill, and a LOT of time to fill, so there is bound to be lots of repeats.

Also making TV programs is not cheap, so once you have spent a fair bit of money making a TV show, like say Downton Abbey, you are going to show it plenty of times to get your moneys worth.

And of course because "proper" TV shows are now expensive to make
with script writers, actors, film crews etc. it is easier for TV companies to make "reality" TV shows where you stick a camera in front of a group of people (hotel staff, hospital staff, rubbish collectors etc) and just film everything they do then edit it down to a 30 minute show.

No script writers, no actors, so cheap to make.

Which is why the overall quality of current TV is so low (apart from a few quality show that are made, mainly by the BBC).