So I haven’t had cable TV in years, but I moved somewhere that it’s included, so I figured what the hell and have the TV on in the background sometime.
Unlike years ago, most channels are running long marathons of the same show over and over rather than having varied blocks of programming. This was a surprise.
For example, looking for tomorrow evening from 5-10pm, History Channel has a 5 hour block of swamp people, Travel Channel has Paranormal caught on camera for 5 hours, HGTV has 4 hours of flip or flop, animal planet 5 hours of deadliest catch, national geographic has 5 hours of life below zero, I could list dozens of other examples.
If I had to guess, maybe TV execs thought that since they were losing share to streaming services, and people tended to binge watch on streaming services, they were trying to replicate that experience. But that seems silly to me - after all, the streaming experience is way better with more control and less/no commercials, so who would watch the same binge marathon on TV that they would on streaming? So it seems to me like TV should be catering to the people who aren’t switching to streaming since they can’t beat/match them at that game, and having a curated variety seems like it would appeal more to the people watching traditional TV, since part of what would make you stick with cable is probably being old and not wanting to change. Do those people who are still sticking with cable TV really want to see the same show over and over?
But I mean, I guess they have the ratings numbers and they figured out that this works. Maybe a lot of TV watching is background viewing and that works better by picking a show and sticking with it for hours?
Just thought it was a curious change in the way TV scheduling works that surprised me and was wondering if anyone else had thoughts.
Sundance Channel scheduling is based almost entirely on blocks of shows.
Monday and Tuesday 9AM to Midnight Law and Order Criminal Intent (5 hours) NCIS (8 hours) Wed 9AM to Midnight Criminal Minds (14 hours) Thursday and Friday Law and Order (14 hours)
Weekends are mostly movies. Sunday morning has 6 hours of Monk
Late,Late night is Columbo followed by Andy Griffith or Hogans Heros or Gilligans Island
I love this channel. But they burn through shows quickly. I’ve seen the first ten seasons of NCIS 4 times since last Sept. I keep hoping they’ll get rights to seasons 11-19.
I think along with that they may be trying to do a bit of ‘on demand’ style with it too. What I mean by that if it’s a certain day/time you are going to see one show no matter when you tune in, so that show is on demand, on your schedule for that day whenever you want to tune in. I think it also works great as a background playing, as long as you like the show it’s sort of easy to let it play.
I just assumed it was cheapness on the part of the cable channels. Why pay for x different shows when you can just pay for one and show x episodes in a row?
This is my impression as well. I’ve seen the same kind of schedules, but it’s mostly re-runs of old shows, some decades old by now. It looks to me like they’re just filling the time in between the few new shows they have with stuff that sold well in the past, and might gain a few eyeballs in their off-hours on the cheap.
My example is the CTV Sci-Fi channel here in Canada (what used to be the Space Channel). Probably 80% of their schedule is repeats of various Star Trek shows, with “Resident Alien” being the only current show of any interest*, which only gets played once or twice the week a new episode comes out.
*They have a few other new shows, but they’re generally low-budget crap they also bought cheap from other producers. Without Resident Alien, there’d be almost no reason to ever watch this channel.
They’ve done ‘marathons’ on cable channels for years. Maybe they’re doing more of it now that streaming tends toward binge watching.
I’d say that the real determinant is whether or not they’re broadcasting a block of NEW episodes all at once- AFAIK that’s not the case at the moment, and they just show a bunch of re-runs in a block.
I don’t think the OP is about why these stations are showing so many re-reruns of old shows , either because of cheapness or because they only have a few new shows or because the station literally shows nothing but old reruns. (sometimes with a theme, like the “Heroes and Icons” station ) All of those are most likely true and happened on some stations before streaming was a thing , but I think what the OP is talking about is something a little different. I think the question is " Why does a station show a five hour block of show A on Monday , five hours of Show B on Tuesday and so on rather the more traditional schedule of one hour of shows A through E at the same time Monday through Friday?"
I don’t think it’s a matter of trying to replicate streaming or on demand, because it really isn’t either one. If someone were to try to replicate a version of on-demand by using a DVR it wouldn’t matter if five episodes of Baywatch were all shown on Monday or one episode was shown each day. It’s either something to do with their target audience - maybe their target audience is likely to be doing something else one or more days a week so they would miss every Thursday episode* or they think it’s a good marketing tool, similar to the stations that have a marathon of some show every Dec31-Jan 1.
* And judging by the commercials I see on some of the networks that do this , what that target audience is likely to be doing one or more days a week is going to the senior center.
I remember back in the late 80s I could catch the same 8 hour block of programming 3 times a day on the Comedy Channel - which was a blast because of my insomnia. If I missed something, I knew that I could just hang out and it would come around again. [I really miss the original Comedy Channel, I loved the little clip format, there was one that was a hoot, a stuffy looking British High Society Dame sitting at the head of her table, and the butler was offering toasts in place of whoever originally came to her dinners and was now dead. I remember now that Nickelodian also used to repeat shows like that, I remember seeing one Antipodean show about some aliens called Wilburforce or something like that at least 5 or 6 times over about a year.]
I watch ‘ER’ re-runs on cable, they’re on from 9 a.m. - 3 p.m. every weekday, followed by ‘House’, from then until 7 or 8 p.m. Somehow older comedies of varying quality fill up 18 hours a day on cable. Andy Griffith all day on one. … If Kevin James is getting royalties for ‘King of Queens’ he must be one of the richest men on the planet.
They’re definitely doing more of it. Marathons used to be occasional things, that the channels would advertise as special events. The Space Channel I mentioned earlier did this when they got the rights to broadcast the fifth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer just before that season came out. They made a point of showing all of the first four seasons in the weeks leading up to season five.
But now, it’s just run of the mill filler. No special event, no lead-in to something else, just TV for the sake of TV.
Sundance later at night runs marathons of Perry Mason (the original, Raymond Burr version). I think it’s Wednesday and Friday nights, starting at midnight or 1:00am.
MeTV runs an episode of Perry Mason on weeknights at 10:30 Central. It was interesting to me that the episodes look older on Sundance. I think (but am not 100% sure) that Sundance has the contrast set higher, giving a more old-timey look.
Yeah, Nick did a Peteathon of Pete & Pete episodes over 25 years ago. I think it’s more frequent now with more channels. We picked up some Storage Wars New York (don’t judge me ) from a big Storage Wars marathon just last week or so.
) from a big Storage Wars marathon just last week or so.