How do they schedule reruns? Is there a logical schedule?
For example, the Seinfeld reruns. They seem to show certain episodes over and over again and yet never show certain episodes. Also, they are not in chronological order. What gives?
Anyone here know?
I just looked through our local TV listings. It’s relatively regular, surprisingly. Here is the order, with episode numbers, broken up by week:
11:30 rerun - regular
814 The Van Buren Boys
815 The Susie
816 The Pothole
817 The English Patient
818 The Nap
819 The Yada Yada
820 The Millenium
821 The Muffin Tops
7:00 rerun - relatively regular, except skipped episode 408 (The Cheever Letters) and jumped season halfway through.
407 The Bubble Boy
409 The Opera (weekend timeslot)
410 The Virgin
411 The Contest
412 The Airport
413 The Pick
902 The Voice
903 The Serenity Now (weekend timeslot)
904 The Blood
905 The Junk Mail
Random weekend ones
521 The Opposite
514 The Dinner Party
The moral is: as long as you watch the same timeslot, it will make sense, but if you watch every one that’s one, you’re screwed.
OTOH, if Seinfeld doesn’t have a national syndication schedule, your programming director at the local station might just be on crack.
Thank you SmackFu.
I watch both the 7:00 pm and 11:30 pm shows but they still run the same episodes over and over in the same timeslot and yet never show certain episodes (I’m dying to see the episode with the black Acura NSX).
The season jump you noted is interesting. I notice at the end of each episode, after the credits, where the year is shown, they always show certain seasons and never some.
Same with the Drew Carey reruns at 6:30 pm on Fox (11:00 pm on UPN shows the same episode) - same few episodes over and over again.
What is syndication? I hear that all the time but never understood it.
Are you sying that the programming schedule might be determined locally?
Thanks again for taking the time.
TV stations don’t typically buy all episodes of a TV series at once; usually they just buy blocks of episodes. If a certain TV station has purchased only one block, then that’s all they have to show.
It depends on how the syndication is done. Some shows are on the same schedule nationally, thus all stations will run the same episodes on the same days and it’s up to the syndicator to decide which episodes to run. Seinfeld and Friends, for example, are on a national schedule. The Simpsons is not, and each individual station chooses which episodes to run.
Well, think about Seinfeld. . . There were over 180 episodes. No programming manager is going to bite off on a 180-ep syndication package. They’re just going to get a sample to occupy a time slot, usually not more than six months’ worth. That’s pretty much the case for any program with a large number of eps.
To build on what Tradnor has offered:
Local programming directors can come up with some pretty interesting variations on scheduling. A local station in St. Louis seems to make a practice of holding out a few select episodes of especially popular shows and keeping them in reserve. Thus, I recall, when WKRP in Cincinnatti was popular in sydication there were a couple of episodes which never got aired except when there was a delay in a Cardinals game or some other minor glitch in the schedule. I remember that another station went through a period once when, inscurtably, it ran a series in reverse order–on Tuesday characters would be talking in anticipation about what they had done on Monday.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents is a show which seems to be invariably shown in its original sequence. Thus, the episode where Gary Merrill played an ex-track star always airs immediately before an episode about a a broken-down retired actor who played vampires in the 1930s, and tries to revive his career by appearing in an ultra-cheap horror movie. Why I have noticed this is that the Merrill episode features the two actors who played the male aliens in Plan 9 From Outer Space, and the second episode reads as though it was suggested by Bela Lugosi’s involvement in that film.
About a year ago a local station was making a big deal about how they were going to run all of the Seinfeld episodes in order. I tried to watch as it went along, but life happens and you can’t see them all. Eventually I just gave up so I don’t know if they stuck to their word (though I imagine they did).
Yeah, a local channel here did that too…saying they would run the entire Seinfeld series in the correct order.
Basically syndication is the practice of big networks selling the broadcast rights and recordings of popular shows to local stations. If you watch Seinfeld reruns on KTXC Channel 7, they were sold the rights by a syndicate or distributor working for NBC.
The local networks air these shows whenever they please, and unforunately, in whatever order they choose.
Some shows aren’t produced and aired by the networks, but are syndication only. Some examples of this are Hercules and Xena.
This was originally done with popular radio shows, and the practice has been handed down.
Currently, I believe after 100 episodes or so of your favorite sitcom, the network decides they can profit from syndication.
Actually, the syndication rights for Seinfeld are owned by Columbia-TriStar.
WFLD runs pretty much all the Seinfelds. However they show The Simpsons THREE times a day, and the early episodes are not seen too often anymore. (WFLD-TV Channel 32 Fox Chicago)
Sorry, my mistake. I was basically gabbing more than I knew.
Onoe minor point nobody has touched on re: syndication scheduling. I have noticed that if a network is running a series (in this case TBS running ‘Three’s Company’), they may follow in order, except to skip over seasonal episodes (in this case, they skipped the Christmas episode, because in their syndication schedule it came around in April or something.)
That screwed up my taping order! 