In defense of the rerun

Posted on January 30, 2007 by Gene

The latest miscalculation by the television networks: the “split season”.

A year or two ago, the suits at the networks discovered a disturbing (to them, at least) fact: reruns of hit television shows don’t fare well in the ratings.

Duh.

This gave them the excuse they needed to eliminate reruns. The first show to stop airing repeats became “The West Wing,” if I remember correctly; which soon after tumbled in the ratings even with only first-run episodes.

“Lost” was next, with each episode being shown only once and a no-repeats policy in effect. It, too, began to falter in the ratings. Coincidence?

The networks decided to make a virtue of this new, no-repeats scheme by labeling the various segments of first-run shows as “seasons.” And now the term “Fall Finale” has entered into the zeitgeist.

What used to be the last episode before the December repeats is now… well, the last episode. And therein lies the problem.

Let’s take “Lost” as an example. In the old days, we’d have had six weeks of new episodes followed by six weeks of repeats, then new episodes again. The show would be fixed in our minds as airing at a certain time every week and would become a habit. Boom — those repeats are taken away, and instead we have six weeks of Lost and then six weeks of… I dunno. Something else. Lost isn’t there anymore. It seems like it’s been canceled. It has disappeared from our television listings.

Then there’s a show like “Jericho.” It had a good start, it was rough around the edges and needed some work, but we stuck with it… then it went off the air after a “Fall Finale.” It’s gone, there’s no mention of it on the air. The natural conclusion is that it was canceled or moved or something…

Here’s the thing: when these shows do come back, viewers will have to adjust their habits to get back into them. And many people won’t bother. Even though those vaunted repeats don’t perform well in the ratings, they serve a very important purpose: ensuring that your audience comes back quickly and easily when the show returns to new episodes. “Battlestar Galactica” split their season in two; but they kept us supplied with repeat airings in the middle to keep us addicted.

Either that, or the networks will adopt a policy more like the UK (rather than this half-assed version they’re trying now): run all episodes of a season in order with no hiatus in the middle. Just show the episodes, straight through, for 26 weeks. Boom. Done. (This is obviously easier in the UK, where a “season” can consist of as little as 6 to 13 episodes.)

I don’t know about you, but I am simply no longer invested in “Lost” after this hiatus; and no longer have any interest at all in “Jericho” because it wasn’t around long enough to become a habit. I think a lot of people are going to feel the same way; I’ll bet that this no-reruns experiment will die a quick death by next fall.