One thing that wasn’t true in 2008 is USA Network’s "All SVU All the Time " schedule. Seriously - it’s like the only program they run. Today’s (Aug 27) schedule is SVU continuously from 4:01 am until 10:00 pm, and in the 6 hours before 4:00 am when it starts all over, they have two Criminal Intents and *another *SVU in there.
In this modern era, when the goddam Weather Channel doesn’t even show weather anymore, how can one channel become so specialized?
Watching ILL on DVD, one thing I thought was interesting–they didn’t just reshow the old episodes, but created a little intro/wrap scene to precede it to keep the show in continuity. Usually, Ricky and the Mertzes are sitting around talking about Lucy and the baby, then someone says “Oh, remember when Lucy did that wacky thing? It all started when…” and then they’d dissolve into the rerun. These intros are of course gone from the syndicated episodes, but are shown separately among the DVD bonus features.
Technically, this statement is true of any TV show.
I don’t know if that can account for Gilligan, since that was in b&w for the first season. And unlike stuff like Bewitched* and I Dream of Jeannie*, it doesn’t ever appear to have had the color episodes syndicated without the b&w ones included.
*- I grew up watching reruns of those on the local station and didn’t even realize they had b&w episodes until Nick At Nite started running them much later on.
Not the good ones!
I’ve been working on a project that can provide a bit of a data point.
Since the summer of 1999 the TV show that has been shown the most times in reruns on primetime network TV is Law & Order: Special Victims Unit with about 550 reruns (I don’t have access to the file right now but that’s my memory) since it started in 2000.
So that’s a very, very specific case. it probably stands up pretty well for being very long running and regularly used by NBC to fill other holes in the schedule as shows get canceled. I suspect the original Law & Order would surpass it (the research that includes this information would eventually go back to 1985) as well as The Simpsons, but I think the pattern of reruns on TV from older eras of TV probably mean other long running shows will not have so many primetime network reruns.
Whoops, was thinking of CSI with the 550 number.
From 6/15/99 through 8/15/14, the scripted shows with at least 300 rerun airings on primetime network TV are:
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit - 699 rerun airings
The Simpsons
C.S.I.: - 524
Law & Order - 490
Law & Order: Criminal Intent - 381 (note, this counts the years where eps first ran on USA as reruns when shown on NBC)
NCIS - 377
Two and a Half Men - 368
Smallville - 368
Family Guy - 364
C.S.I.: Miami - 338
7th Heaven - 332
That '70s Show - 331
Reba - 322
Girlfriends - 307
Criminal Minds - 304
For SVU, that is nearly 50 reruns per year per season on air. Most of the others on that list are in the mid-30s.
According to a directory of prime time TV I own, a New York TV station reran every episode of “The Abbott and Costello Show” two hundred times(!) each. Since there were 52 episodes, that’s over ten thousand showings on just one TV station!
and in some markets you might get to watch Simpsons three times per day.
What would one of the series main actors in the above shows typically get as a residual from one airing of the their shows?
Never mind answers are here