Rerun

• 1. Origins And Invention

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  Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz invented the rerun during the production of I Love Lucy between 1951 and 1957. They rebroadcasted episodes while Ball was pregnant to fill summer hiatuses that previously featured lower-priority replacement shows. Rod Serling's teleplay Patterns proved the viability of this strategy in 1955 when a reairing drew more viewers than the original broadcast. People who missed the first airing a month prior tuned in to catch the reairing, buoyed by strong word of mouth. Before this era, most television shows from the late 1940s were performed live and never recorded. Networks began making kinescope recordings of shows broadcast live from the East Coast to allow later broadcasts for the West Coast.

• 2. Hiatus And Seasonal Gaps

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  Shows tend to leave their regular timeslot after the November sweeps period which determines the cost of commercial runs. Reruns usually run from mid-December until mid-January or even February sweeps to fill winter gaps. This phase allows networks to try out new shows that did not make it onto the fall schedule. These series typically run six to 13 episodes before potentially getting renewed for a half season or full season. The number of episodes per season dropped below 26 in the 1970s after being well over 30 during the 1950s. Specials like Peter Pan or The Wizard of Oz often pad out the remainder of the schedule if they are especially well received.

• 3. Syndication Economics

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  A television program goes into syndication when many episodes are sold as a package to cable channels or local station owners. Often programs are not particularly profitable until they are sold for syndication because local stations need to sell more commercial airtime than network affiliates. About 100 episodes are required for a weekly series to be rerun in daily syndication at least four times a week. Few people anticipated the long life that a popular series would eventually have in syndication so most performers signed contracts limiting residual payments to about six repeats. After those six repeats actors received nothing and production companies kept 100% of any income until copyright expired. Many shows were systematically destroyed due to lack of awareness regarding potential revenue from them.

• 4. Classic Television Channels

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  Specialty channels built solely to run former network programming emerged with growing availability of cable and satellite television. Nick at Nite, TV Land, TBS, USA Network, WGN America, Logo TV, Pop, Discovery Family, Game Show Network, Boomerang, Nicktoons, INSP, fetv, RFD-TV, and Hallmark Channel all devote schedules to postsyndication reruns. Equity Media Holdings used low-power stations to carry its own Retro Television Network before going bankrupt and selling stations to Daystar Television Network. Since the early 2010s digital subchannel networks allowed increasing specialization including MeTV, getTV, Antenna TV, Rewind TV, Catchy Comedy, Roar, Laff, Buzzr, Bounce TV, TheGrio, Story Television, TrueReal, Defy TV, Twist, Quest, Grit, WEST, Heroes & Icons, Circle, Stadium, SportsGrid, Comet, Charge!, True Crime Network, Court TV, Ion Mystery, Start TV, Newsy, Movies!, and This TV. Traditionally scripted comedies and dramas are most likely to be rerun as evergreen content without losing cultural relevance.

• 5. Home Video Retail

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  The rise of the DVD video format made box sets featuring season or series runs increasingly important retail items. Some view this development as a rising new idea in the industry of reruns as an increasingly major revenue source instead of standard business models for advertising draws. Many series such as Modern Family and Grey's Anatomy release DVD sets between the end of that season and the beginning of the next. Perfect Strangers has seldom been in wide syndication since the late 1990s primarily due to lack of demand. Only a DVD set of the first and second seasons was released because of the expensiveness of relicensing songs used in later seasons performed by the show's two lead characters. Shout! Factory sometimes secures rights for future DVD releases when distributors do not hold syndication rights to the program.

• 6. International Variations

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  In South Africa reruns of daily soap operas like 7de Laan are called an omnibus broadcast on Sunday afternoons back-to-back. The United Kingdom uses repeat only for single episodes while rerun refers to entire series or seasons. Canadian broadcasters carry reruns much like the United States especially on specialty channels relying largely on off-network library rights. Until recently BBC, ITV and Channel 4 commonly repeated classic shows from their archives before drying up in favor of newer formats. In 2019 The Office ranked 6th on The Guardian list of 100 best TV shows of the 21st century after gaining traction once the BBC decided to repeat it in a different timeslot. Early agreements with Equity limited broadcasts usually to twice within five years causing many programs to be junked after repeat rights expired.