One thing you can say about the rise of digital telly: there are now more repeats shown on British television than at any time since 2003.
In decades gone by, Brits would regularly moan about the number of repeats on the box - "another Christmas, another showing of The Great Escape" - but it's hard to imagine that repeats …
Mainly over the liscense people's attitude, but I also work for a major broadcaster and out of the 20 odd new channels they have launched across Europe in the last 6 months, the percentage of new content is zero.
This included a new Freeview channel (the first for this broadcaster) which shows almost entirely re-runs of TJ Hooker.
On the assumption that the full gamut of available channels is forming the data for these reports, then given the sheer amount of channels basically dedicated to 100% repeats (Dave etc) then it's still pretty good I would say.
Not too long ago we had four channels. For a program to appear on one of those they usually had to be good (not always, cough eldorado cough).
Recently, some decisions have been made (probably due to advertising budgets I'd wager) about upping the "choice" of the viewer (increase in quantity). This has resulted in a drop in quality of programming. These days its a case of stick it out regardless of whether it is good or not. It says something about modern uk TV when a channel for Ocean Finance is available for the really bored.
If you miss anything you dont really need iPlayer or an other those other apps either as it will be repeated the next day/week several times. Shows, movies etc. all go round and round and round.
It is getting very hard to find the golden nugget of a decent quality item worth watching that isnt a repeat.
How many times has The Core/Sahara etc. etc. been on this year?
Missed it? Dont worry it will be on again in an hour!
Even bored with the same silicone slappers on babestation! lol
Can we go back to just having the five channels please? Less is more.
To be fair I'd rather have 50 channels with 50% repeats than 4 channels with 25% repeats. A lot of the "repeats" though aren't repeats in the classic sense as a lot of people will watch a soon after repeat rather than record the original.
The only reason I'd even want a telly --I do not currently own one-- this time of the year is to watch "Dinner for one" broadcast once again. Otherwise, well, it's nothing but repeats anyway.
It really is terrible at the moment. I used to like the Dave channel, until I'd finally watched everything I wanted at least once. Now it's a waste of airtime. And some programme episodes are shown on different channels at different times, and I've had to give up on them as I end up starting to watch what I think is the next episode only to find I've seen it before, and then I probably miss one thinking it's an episode I've already seen. One needs to keep a flaming timetable these days and tick things off on.
Let's go back to 5 channels of analogue and teletext on both. Ah those were the days.
Granted, I'm watching "BBC America" via satellite...
...so it's like watching the BBC through the wrong end of a telescope, but, still...
...I'm starting to "get" a lot of British commenters' complaints here about the declining quality of BBC content (sadly, even the news), not to mention all the reruns. While one British commenter pointed out in another thread that it only seemed better because the BBC only exported the "good stuff" to the States, I'm still seeing your commenters' complaints being borne out over here. Our cable/satellite service includes "BBC America" which, from what I can see these days, is almost entirely make-over shows ("Ground Force" was the only one I really cared for), sensationalistic documentaries about really freakish people, warmed-over imitations of "Law And Order", and about half a dozen different variations of premises involving either antique sales or the auctioning off of peoples' old crap* -- and most of them are reruns. Hell, it wouldn't be quite so bad if they'd just telecast a soccer... uhh, sorry, _football_ game once in a while, and I don't mean "Match Of The Day" (which is, basically, a rerun, right?)
If it makes you feel any better over there, it's gotten just as bad over here -- so bad, in fact, that in network promos for any given series, they actually make a big deal out of it being "a brand new episode of (Insert Title)!"
-----
*Actually, I'm waiting for the BBC to debut "Swag In The Sitting Room: the show that sends a crack team of burglars to pillage your house, and then sells your stuff back to you at auction!"
Title says it all - I never watch at the original broadcast time.
Also I rely on the repeats to build up my collections of The Simpsons, Dark Angel, Friends, all versions of Star Trek, the X Files, ... when I miss episodes the first time around.
What a load of Pants you write Citizen, the BBC is far and away the best provider of new content in the UK, News and Current Affairs, maybe not as good as it used to be, but still the best in the market place, great drama, spooks, hustle, Doctor Who, Torchwood to name just a few. Then there is the BBC website, both news and non news and of course BBC Radio. The Licence Fee is great value, especially when compared to the cost of Sky or cable. Long live the BBC and long live non commercial funding of it!
Whilst it still has its fanboys, there does seem to be a growing amount of discontent about the quality of the BBC's output. As far as I'm concerned, the licence fee is hardly worthwhile for its occasional and erratic output of Top Gear and Jools Holland, and whatever claims of impartiality its news service once had are in the distant past.
The BBC may still produce a lot of original material. It's just a shame that most of it is crap.
... how much of that discontent is stirred up by the tabloid media whose proprietors stand to benefit most from the BBC being given a hard time? Remember, most citizens are so thick their opinions can't really be held to account for much. They just repeat the drivel spoon fed to them by the disgusting portion of the british press and think they know about stuff.
I'm guessing the broadcasters will say that +1 channels are not repeats, nor are the many repeats of a new episode of something within the first couple of weeks?
I remember when Torchwood started on BBC3, they showed the first episode *11* times within two weeks! I bet the BBC claim all 11 of these were first showings.
So without saying what Ofcom class as a repeat, this article isn't particularly helpful. I don't think anyone doesn't already know that most Freeview channels show repeats, be in BBC3 showing Two Pints in an endless loop, ITV3 showing old comedies and dramas from the 70s-90s, ITV4 showing old films and 60s cult shows, or the smaller channels like Dave and Virgin1 showing endless Top Gear and Star Trek.
It may also have been more useful to compare the five analogue channels now with how they were ten years ago. Ultimately, you can't expect to have 80 digital terrestrial channels full of new shows. Surely it's inevitable that one day 75% of everything broadcast will be repeats, or a huge number of channels will have to close because they can't afford to go on.
Mind you, that would free up wasted bandwidth to allow more HDTV channels. They can also get rid of the +1 channels. I think it's stupid that +1 channels have arrived at the exact same time as Sky+ and PVRs, not to mention numerous repeats on sister channels.
The last time I saw Deal or No Deal (about 2006, and it wasn't my falt that I saw it, honestly!) it first aired at 4:15pm on Ch4, then was on Ch4+1 at 5:15, then More4 at 18:10, then More4+1 at 19:10, then E4 at about 8pm, then E4+1 at 9pm, then on one of the Freeview channels again at 1-2am, then on the +1 at 2-3am, then Channel4 at 9am the next morning and 10am on Ch4+1, before going out again around noon on E4/More4 and finally at 1pm on the +1.
Then a couple of hours later another episode would premier on Channel 4 at 4:15pm and the vicious cycle would start all over again! Seriously, we're worried about green light bulbs, loft insulation, car emissions and the economy, but what about all the money and energy wasted keeping hundreds of TV and radio channels going to show tripe like this?
Defining a repeat is fraught: make a note that any TV output that is a 'review' or a 'best of' isn't classed as a repeat, even though the vast majority of its content is, by design, lifted wholseale from existing material. Mind you, it is damn cheap to air - and that's a critical ingredent these days.
A pal of mine works in the production business and tells me that there's been almost no new drama shot this year, so the future isn't looking any better. However, word is the big advertisers are getting twitchy about their image being associated with repeats and are driving change. Expect to see very carefully arranged product placement and adverts that are dovetailed to fit the drama better than ever...
Still, I'd rather sit through a double-repeat of Porridge than 10 minutes of the more banal junk that passes for current prime time viewing.
/mine's the one with the sonic 'click' remote in the pocket...ah, the days!
...waitaminnit, here's an idea: how about Viewer-Generated Content? You know, like YouTube, only on _real_ TV? And I don't mean "reality TV", either.
I mean... I don't know how bad it is over there, but over here there's so much crap on cable/satellite now -- three different shows involving chef competitions, at least three different shows involving fashion design/modeling competitions, at least four different shows involving fashion makeovers, and more goddamn' Law And Order reruns on as many channels as they can shoehorn it into -- that I've figured it couldn't be any worse if they just let people in the audience conceive and shoot their own shows and send them in... and I mean actual shows, too, not like America's Funniest Home Videos.
Hell, I've got FinalCut Pro, an HD camcorder, a DVD burner, a twisted sense of humor and some smart, arty friends who are game enough; I'll bet even _I_ could come up with enough stupid jokes to fill thirteen episodes of _something_.
I can't remember what it's called. I always refer to it as "The Tinfoil Hat Channel" as its output seems to consist entirely of grainy video of some complete twat espousing his theory that Jesus was an alien monster or somesuch and interviewing other Jesus-was-an-alien-monster believers to justify it.
Last time I ran across this while channel flicking, there was some arsehat on there who seemed to believe that every word written by Dan Brown was fact. Fortunately I found that "The Great Escape" was showing on another channel, so I watched that instead.....
There's some pretty good stuff on Controversial tv - SKY Channel 200, now and again.
Christopher Barnet Challenging Reality was great and the scene with him struggling to cross a small river was comedy gold.
There was another program that follows a tour guide round a Jack the Ripper tour which was also good and pretty informative. I would imagine Camcording tour guides could actually provide quite good TV content.
Also, there's some great comedic content on that channel.
To quote Theo Chalmers "watching this may change your life"
I'd rather have a repeat of Quincy or Kojak than watch yet another premium rate phoneline financed quiz/bingo/roulette program. Channel 5 barely gets past midnight before it hangs up any pretence of making real content.
You only have to watch channels such as BBC3, Virgin where I find myself watching the same series of Dark Angel and Roswell no less than 3 times! It's madness in the recent past.
And the sequence of progamming, heck, you just don't know where you are, one week you're watching an episode from one season of a series the next week, you're watching a completely different season, then the following week, who knows. Continuity is completely lost and you have no idea what seasons you've seen.
We all know it's total crap, so why do they do it?
Repeats are great! Luckily this has meant my kids have found out what real humour was. Unfortunately one of them found Friends as well. Can't win 'em all.
The cable/satellite companies here in the Colonies like to go on about the huge number of channels available, but, to paraphrase Pink Floyd, "...I got two hundred channels of shit on the TV to choose from." To cite just a few:
The Learning Channel used to actually have educational(ish) programming, now it's almost wall-to-wall makeover/reality/makeover reality shows -- really trashy, annoying ones.
Arts & Entertainment Channel used to actually have highbrow(ish) arts programming; now it's almost wall-to-wall Law And Order reruns. Hell, I've even taken to calling it Law And Order Channel.
Comedy Central used to have a lot of interesting original comedy; now it's pretty much wall-to-wall Saturday Night Live reruns (the crappy, post-70s episodes) interspersed with Daily Show and Colbert Report (the same episode at least three times a day), South Park (the same episode maybe twice a day) and really mediocre movies.
HBO (Home Box Office) used to have lots of really good original series, really good edgy stand-up comedians, and halfway-decent movies; now, it's basically The Channel You're Allowed To Curse On, featuring episodes of beautifully-produced but trashy and lame serials rerun at least four times a day. (sorry, just couldn't dig The Sopranos)
At least we still have Turner Classic Movies channel -- old classic films, uncut, no commercials. You can't go wrong with Bogart or the Marx Brothers, I always say.
gigbeeragf.pbz saved me from boring reruns, missed episodes, commercial breaks, horrible german dubs, and having to plan my day around somebody elses idea of a timetable.
Just about everything I watch is repeated within a week (on the smae channel) and/or an hour later on SquareEyes Plus 1. Even Dave, a channel founded on repeats, has Daveja Vu.
The number of channels has fragmented the audience so that the money has to be spread that more thinly. The money that each channel gets, therefore, is much less. It is cheaper to buy the rights to repeat something than it often is to make something new because, in making something new, you never know if you are going to cover the cost (what might sound good at the time might not give your viewers the incentive to watch, so nobody wants to buy it or the ads you put in). The only thing that you can make cheaply are those things that require no preparation, for example reality TV, minimal setup quizzes, chat shows and talent comps.
The audience doesn't just get fragmented, it gets bored. It gets fed up with being pumped by increasing amounts of sales blurb, bored of repeats and the rest. They want something new. So they bugger off elsewhere. The pub. The PC. DVDs. ANYTHING except the TV. The audience gets thinner, the revenue gets tighter, the programmes get worse.
Solution? You can probably guess the primary one. Kill off the channels that make no contribution. Give the audience some incentive to watch. Stop screwing the public with endless adverts and poorly made shows. Restore the regions so that they get shows applicable to their viewers' interests. Bring back the IBA. Tell Murdoch to go... well, he probably already does that but remove his overreaching control on British television.
More channels are only better if there is anything to show on them. Admit it, MAGGIE WAS WRONG.
I know a lot of the people who post here work with computers and while I'm sure we all love a busman's holiday there's a whole world out there that lives outside the rectangular glowing idiot-box.
If the TV's so full of repeats it makes you want to hang yourself why not follow the advice of that long-running TV show and Switch Off Your Television Set and Go and Do Something Less Boring Instead?
... you just have to find it. Anyway the licence fee is IMHO worth it just for R3, R4, BBC4 and the website. There are too many here moaning about the populist programmes on the populist channels. If this garbage wasn't on, the beeb would be letting down the majority of its viewers - now that WOULD be a waste of tax(licence) payers money. But watch (or better, record) stuff that is on outside peak times or on channels that are intended for the <10% of people with >50% of a brain, and there is certainly enough content there to justify 50p a day.
Oh, and producing news is more expensive than you think, unless you are just mashing up what has been reported elsewhere ...
PS: I have an idea for a populist yet useful programme - live coverage of a campaign to hunt down and sterilize anyone who has appeared on Jeremy Kyle. Or watched it, come to that.
I have the bog standard freeview and I'm fed up with watching the same regurgitated awful humourless comedies and series broadcast from one channel to the next: BBC1 and BBC2 quizes and shows show up again on Dave and Dave2 but this time 'surprise surprise' they're on a channel with advertising. Are the BBC making hidden profits from the License payers when they sell these shows on?
I'm also tired of the same news items rotated every hour on the news channels. There's a big wide world out there, they keep force feeding us with the news that they want us to hear - I want to know what it being kept quiet!
Back to the independent DVDs for the Xmas viewing for me. Check out Pie 'n' Mash Films.
And just as annoyingly at least 44.8% of each show is repeating the rest of the episode. I've noticed typical reality TV (it's all that is made now) runs thus:
- Preview
- Titles
- Recap of preview
- Introduction including preview of what's coming up
- Advert break
- Recap of introduction
- Repeat of preview
- Original content!!
- 2nd preview
- Advert break
- Recap of 2nd preview
- Rest of content
- Recap
- Titles overlaid with preview of next program.
Sadly much of the content itself is embarrassing silences and not-tense pauses. It isn't exciting to stop talking mid sentence although it allows time to put the kettle on.
Register
One thing you can say about the rise of digital telly: there are now more repeats shown on British television than at any time since 2003. In decades gone by, Brits would regularly moan about the number of repeats on the box - "another Christmas, another showing of The Great Escape" - but it's hard to imagine that repeats …
Page:
gave up on TV
Mainly over the liscense people's attitude, but I also work for a major broadcaster and out of the 20 odd new channels they have launched across Europe in the last 6 months, the percentage of new content is zero.
This included a new Freeview channel (the first for this broadcaster) which shows almost entirely re-runs of TJ Hooker.
TJ Hooker??!
Oh, God. They _are_ scraping the bottom, aren't they? Couldn't afford "Star Trek", then?
Jeezus. Nobody breathe a word of this to Shatner.
Dave
On the assumption that the full gamut of available channels is forming the data for these reports, then given the sheer amount of channels basically dedicated to 100% repeats (Dave etc) then it's still pretty good I would say.
Quality? Or quantity?
Not too long ago we had four channels. For a program to appear on one of those they usually had to be good (not always, cough eldorado cough).
Recently, some decisions have been made (probably due to advertising budgets I'd wager) about upping the "choice" of the viewer (increase in quantity). This has resulted in a drop in quality of programming. These days its a case of stick it out regardless of whether it is good or not. It says something about modern uk TV when a channel for Ocean Finance is available for the really bored.
How much of the rest is reality turds?
Broadcast TV really is pants, I just pay for the good stuff on DVD or iTunes type stores and don't bother with the licence.
You dont need a VCR or PVR anymore.
If you miss anything you dont really need iPlayer or an other those other apps either as it will be repeated the next day/week several times. Shows, movies etc. all go round and round and round.
It is getting very hard to find the golden nugget of a decent quality item worth watching that isnt a repeat.
How many times has The Core/Sahara etc. etc. been on this year?
Missed it? Dont worry it will be on again in an hour!
Even bored with the same silicone slappers on babestation! lol
Can we go back to just having the five channels please? Less is more.
To be fair...
To be fair I'd rather have 50 channels with 50% repeats than 4 channels with 25% repeats. A lot of the "repeats" though aren't repeats in the classic sense as a lot of people will watch a soon after repeat rather than record the original.
The same
The only reason I'd even want a telly --I do not currently own one-- this time of the year is to watch "Dinner for one" broadcast once again. Otherwise, well, it's nothing but repeats anyway.
Damn those plus-one channels
E4+1 etc must be really dragging the average down.
Nice to know...
...I'm NOT paying my TV licence for nothing! Almost a year and I've read more books and got out more.
P.S. The Great Escape is one of my favourite movies: "Gut Luck - thank you!"
(untitled)
It really is terrible at the moment. I used to like the Dave channel, until I'd finally watched everything I wanted at least once. Now it's a waste of airtime. And some programme episodes are shown on different channels at different times, and I've had to give up on them as I end up starting to watch what I think is the next episode only to find I've seen it before, and then I probably miss one thinking it's an episode I've already seen. One needs to keep a flaming timetable these days and tick things off on.
Let's go back to 5 channels of analogue and teletext on both. Ah those were the days.
Granted, I'm watching "BBC America" via satellite...
...so it's like watching the BBC through the wrong end of a telescope, but, still...
...I'm starting to "get" a lot of British commenters' complaints here about the declining quality of BBC content (sadly, even the news), not to mention all the reruns. While one British commenter pointed out in another thread that it only seemed better because the BBC only exported the "good stuff" to the States, I'm still seeing your commenters' complaints being borne out over here. Our cable/satellite service includes "BBC America" which, from what I can see these days, is almost entirely make-over shows ("Ground Force" was the only one I really cared for), sensationalistic documentaries about really freakish people, warmed-over imitations of "Law And Order", and about half a dozen different variations of premises involving either antique sales or the auctioning off of peoples' old crap* -- and most of them are reruns. Hell, it wouldn't be quite so bad if they'd just telecast a soccer... uhh, sorry, _football_ game once in a while, and I don't mean "Match Of The Day" (which is, basically, a rerun, right?)
If it makes you feel any better over there, it's gotten just as bad over here -- so bad, in fact, that in network promos for any given series, they actually make a big deal out of it being "a brand new episode of (Insert Title)!"
-----
*Actually, I'm waiting for the BBC to debut "Swag In The Sitting Room: the show that sends a crack team of burglars to pillage your house, and then sells your stuff back to you at auction!"
100% repeats on my MythTV box
Title says it all - I never watch at the original broadcast time.
Also I rely on the repeats to build up my collections of The Simpsons, Dark Angel, Friends, all versions of Star Trek, the X Files, ... when I miss episodes the first time around.
@Citizen Kaned - "bbc == pants now"
What a load of Pants you write Citizen, the BBC is far and away the best provider of new content in the UK, News and Current Affairs, maybe not as good as it used to be, but still the best in the market place, great drama, spooks, hustle, Doctor Who, Torchwood to name just a few. Then there is the BBC website, both news and non news and of course BBC Radio. The Licence Fee is great value, especially when compared to the cost of Sky or cable. Long live the BBC and long live non commercial funding of it!
The BBC *is* pants
Whilst it still has its fanboys, there does seem to be a growing amount of discontent about the quality of the BBC's output. As far as I'm concerned, the licence fee is hardly worthwhile for its occasional and erratic output of Top Gear and Jools Holland, and whatever claims of impartiality its news service once had are in the distant past.
The BBC may still produce a lot of original material. It's just a shame that most of it is crap.
but...
... how much of that discontent is stirred up by the tabloid media whose proprietors stand to benefit most from the BBC being given a hard time? Remember, most citizens are so thick their opinions can't really be held to account for much. They just repeat the drivel spoon fed to them by the disgusting portion of the british press and think they know about stuff.
What is a repeat?
I'm guessing the broadcasters will say that +1 channels are not repeats, nor are the many repeats of a new episode of something within the first couple of weeks?
I remember when Torchwood started on BBC3, they showed the first episode *11* times within two weeks! I bet the BBC claim all 11 of these were first showings.
So without saying what Ofcom class as a repeat, this article isn't particularly helpful. I don't think anyone doesn't already know that most Freeview channels show repeats, be in BBC3 showing Two Pints in an endless loop, ITV3 showing old comedies and dramas from the 70s-90s, ITV4 showing old films and 60s cult shows, or the smaller channels like Dave and Virgin1 showing endless Top Gear and Star Trek.
It may also have been more useful to compare the five analogue channels now with how they were ten years ago. Ultimately, you can't expect to have 80 digital terrestrial channels full of new shows. Surely it's inevitable that one day 75% of everything broadcast will be repeats, or a huge number of channels will have to close because they can't afford to go on.
Mind you, that would free up wasted bandwidth to allow more HDTV channels. They can also get rid of the +1 channels. I think it's stupid that +1 channels have arrived at the exact same time as Sky+ and PVRs, not to mention numerous repeats on sister channels.
The last time I saw Deal or No Deal (about 2006, and it wasn't my falt that I saw it, honestly!) it first aired at 4:15pm on Ch4, then was on Ch4+1 at 5:15, then More4 at 18:10, then More4+1 at 19:10, then E4 at about 8pm, then E4+1 at 9pm, then on one of the Freeview channels again at 1-2am, then on the +1 at 2-3am, then Channel4 at 9am the next morning and 10am on Ch4+1, before going out again around noon on E4/More4 and finally at 1pm on the +1.
Then a couple of hours later another episode would premier on Channel 4 at 4:15pm and the vicious cycle would start all over again! Seriously, we're worried about green light bulbs, loft insulation, car emissions and the economy, but what about all the money and energy wasted keeping hundreds of TV and radio channels going to show tripe like this?
re. What is a repeat?
Defining a repeat is fraught: make a note that any TV output that is a 'review' or a 'best of' isn't classed as a repeat, even though the vast majority of its content is, by design, lifted wholseale from existing material. Mind you, it is damn cheap to air - and that's a critical ingredent these days.
A pal of mine works in the production business and tells me that there's been almost no new drama shot this year, so the future isn't looking any better. However, word is the big advertisers are getting twitchy about their image being associated with repeats and are driving change. Expect to see very carefully arranged product placement and adverts that are dovetailed to fit the drama better than ever...
Still, I'd rather sit through a double-repeat of Porridge than 10 minutes of the more banal junk that passes for current prime time viewing.
/mine's the one with the sonic 'click' remote in the pocket...ah, the days!
Man cant just sit around
Gotta do something with all those channels that we have for HD broadcasts... heaven knows what will happen if its just a block of empty air.
re: Man can't just sit around
...waitaminnit, here's an idea: how about Viewer-Generated Content? You know, like YouTube, only on _real_ TV? And I don't mean "reality TV", either.
I mean... I don't know how bad it is over there, but over here there's so much crap on cable/satellite now -- three different shows involving chef competitions, at least three different shows involving fashion design/modeling competitions, at least four different shows involving fashion makeovers, and more goddamn' Law And Order reruns on as many channels as they can shoehorn it into -- that I've figured it couldn't be any worse if they just let people in the audience conceive and shoot their own shows and send them in... and I mean actual shows, too, not like America's Funniest Home Videos.
Hell, I've got FinalCut Pro, an HD camcorder, a DVD burner, a twisted sense of humor and some smart, arty friends who are game enough; I'll bet even _I_ could come up with enough stupid jokes to fill thirteen episodes of _something_.
(...because she went into reruns long ago.)
Viewer generated?
We have one of those, it started recently.
I can't remember what it's called. I always refer to it as "The Tinfoil Hat Channel" as its output seems to consist entirely of grainy video of some complete twat espousing his theory that Jesus was an alien monster or somesuch and interviewing other Jesus-was-an-alien-monster believers to justify it.
Last time I ran across this while channel flicking, there was some arsehat on there who seemed to believe that every word written by Dan Brown was fact. Fortunately I found that "The Great Escape" was showing on another channel, so I watched that instead.....
Hey don't diss Controversial tv
There's some pretty good stuff on Controversial tv - SKY Channel 200, now and again.
Christopher Barnet Challenging Reality was great and the scene with him struggling to cross a small river was comedy gold.
There was another program that follows a tour guide round a Jack the Ripper tour which was also good and pretty informative. I would imagine Camcording tour guides could actually provide quite good TV content.
Also, there's some great comedic content on that channel.
To quote Theo Chalmers "watching this may change your life"
Done!
We have that already. It's called "My Family".
You're all wrong, apparently
They're not repeats at all. They're "another chance to see".
So, that's all right, then.
I'd rather...
I'd rather have a repeat of Quincy or Kojak than watch yet another premium rate phoneline financed quiz/bingo/roulette program. Channel 5 barely gets past midnight before it hangs up any pretence of making real content.
we all know
You only have to watch channels such as BBC3, Virgin where I find myself watching the same series of Dark Angel and Roswell no less than 3 times! It's madness in the recent past.
And the sequence of progamming, heck, you just don't know where you are, one week you're watching an episode from one season of a series the next week, you're watching a completely different season, then the following week, who knows. Continuity is completely lost and you have no idea what seasons you've seen.
We all know it's total crap, so why do they do it?
Mike
Repeats are great! Luckily this has meant my kids have found out what real humour was. Unfortunately one of them found Friends as well. Can't win 'em all.
We're choking on it over here, too...
The cable/satellite companies here in the Colonies like to go on about the huge number of channels available, but, to paraphrase Pink Floyd, "...I got two hundred channels of shit on the TV to choose from." To cite just a few:
The Learning Channel used to actually have educational(ish) programming, now it's almost wall-to-wall makeover/reality/makeover reality shows -- really trashy, annoying ones.
Arts & Entertainment Channel used to actually have highbrow(ish) arts programming; now it's almost wall-to-wall Law And Order reruns. Hell, I've even taken to calling it Law And Order Channel.
Comedy Central used to have a lot of interesting original comedy; now it's pretty much wall-to-wall Saturday Night Live reruns (the crappy, post-70s episodes) interspersed with Daily Show and Colbert Report (the same episode at least three times a day), South Park (the same episode maybe twice a day) and really mediocre movies.
HBO (Home Box Office) used to have lots of really good original series, really good edgy stand-up comedians, and halfway-decent movies; now, it's basically The Channel You're Allowed To Curse On, featuring episodes of beautifully-produced but trashy and lame serials rerun at least four times a day. (sorry, just couldn't dig The Sopranos)
At least we still have Turner Classic Movies channel -- old classic films, uncut, no commercials. You can't go wrong with Bogart or the Marx Brothers, I always say.
I download my TV
TV killed the Radio, Internet killed the TV!
Hey, we're redefining mathematics!
If 44.8% = "nearly all", I'm sure a future article will claim that 52% = "hardly any".
Where did you learn maths - New Labour HQ?
Grumbles
Those grumbling about reruns on the English telly should be condemned to watching a week of Italian Telly,,,
Don't have a tv any more
gigbeeragf.pbz saved me from boring reruns, missed episodes, commercial breaks, horrible german dubs, and having to plan my day around somebody elses idea of a timetable.
I'm amazed it's only 50%
Just about everything I watch is repeated within a week (on the smae channel) and/or an hour later on SquareEyes Plus 1. Even Dave, a channel founded on repeats, has Daveja Vu.
TV?!?
Who needs TV when we have ninjavideo.net?
TV Standards Come On Down!!!
The number of channels has fragmented the audience so that the money has to be spread that more thinly. The money that each channel gets, therefore, is much less. It is cheaper to buy the rights to repeat something than it often is to make something new because, in making something new, you never know if you are going to cover the cost (what might sound good at the time might not give your viewers the incentive to watch, so nobody wants to buy it or the ads you put in). The only thing that you can make cheaply are those things that require no preparation, for example reality TV, minimal setup quizzes, chat shows and talent comps.
The audience doesn't just get fragmented, it gets bored. It gets fed up with being pumped by increasing amounts of sales blurb, bored of repeats and the rest. They want something new. So they bugger off elsewhere. The pub. The PC. DVDs. ANYTHING except the TV. The audience gets thinner, the revenue gets tighter, the programmes get worse.
Solution? You can probably guess the primary one. Kill off the channels that make no contribution. Give the audience some incentive to watch. Stop screwing the public with endless adverts and poorly made shows. Restore the regions so that they get shows applicable to their viewers' interests. Bring back the IBA. Tell Murdoch to go... well, he probably already does that but remove his overreaching control on British television.
More channels are only better if there is anything to show on them. Admit it, MAGGIE WAS WRONG.
If TV consists mainly of repeats
I know a lot of the people who post here work with computers and while I'm sure we all love a busman's holiday there's a whole world out there that lives outside the rectangular glowing idiot-box.
If the TV's so full of repeats it makes you want to hang yourself why not follow the advice of that long-running TV show and Switch Off Your Television Set and Go and Do Something Less Boring Instead?
ITV 3
Is a bit like being inside an expiring octogenarians head as he relives his glory days while trying to work out when exactly 'past it' kicked in.
Paris; a serious rival to ITV for "pointless"
The good stuff is still there...
... you just have to find it. Anyway the licence fee is IMHO worth it just for R3, R4, BBC4 and the website. There are too many here moaning about the populist programmes on the populist channels. If this garbage wasn't on, the beeb would be letting down the majority of its viewers - now that WOULD be a waste of tax(licence) payers money. But watch (or better, record) stuff that is on outside peak times or on channels that are intended for the <10% of people with >50% of a brain, and there is certainly enough content there to justify 50p a day.
Oh, and producing news is more expensive than you think, unless you are just mashing up what has been reported elsewhere ...
PS: I have an idea for a populist yet useful programme - live coverage of a campaign to hunt down and sterilize anyone who has appeared on Jeremy Kyle. Or watched it, come to that.
Along with the news repeats
I have the bog standard freeview and I'm fed up with watching the same regurgitated awful humourless comedies and series broadcast from one channel to the next: BBC1 and BBC2 quizes and shows show up again on Dave and Dave2 but this time 'surprise surprise' they're on a channel with advertising. Are the BBC making hidden profits from the License payers when they sell these shows on?
I'm also tired of the same news items rotated every hour on the news channels. There's a big wide world out there, they keep force feeding us with the news that they want us to hear - I want to know what it being kept quiet!
Back to the independent DVDs for the Xmas viewing for me. Check out Pie 'n' Mash Films.
Show Percentage
And just as annoyingly at least 44.8% of each show is repeating the rest of the episode. I've noticed typical reality TV (it's all that is made now) runs thus:
- Preview
- Titles
- Recap of preview
- Introduction including preview of what's coming up
- Advert break
- Recap of introduction
- Repeat of preview
- Original content!!
- 2nd preview
- Advert break
- Recap of 2nd preview
- Rest of content
- Recap
- Titles overlaid with preview of next program.
Sadly much of the content itself is embarrassing silences and not-tense pauses. It isn't exciting to stop talking mid sentence although it allows time to put the kettle on.
license fees
Someone remind me why my license fee (which incidentally is legally a tax but is collected by a private company)
1: Should pay for non-locally produced content?
2: Shouldn't be available to non-BBC entities who produce local programs?
3: Is paying for audio RADIO transmissions? (Whatever happened to radio licences? Oh yes, they got too hard to enforce)
The BBC makes a tidy profit on selling Top Gear, etc overseas. Why isn't that clawed back?
Back on topic: Does anyone have stats on HOW Ofcom came to the 48% mark?
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