I just tuned in Medium and was quite astonished it’s a rerun; the show’s website says the season premiere is November 15. How did this happen? It used to be reruns were a summer thing and every show’s season began in September.
I think in this particular case Medium was thrown in to fill the hole left by the cancellation of Justice.
More generally, November is a sweeps month so you want to put your strongest shows on in that month. If you don’t have any breakout hits yet in the season, it may make sense to throw something in that you are betting on and hope for the best.
Minor reason: the World Series causes shows on that network to be pre-empted. So they
don’t even bother doing first-run eps during that time, until Novemeber rolls around.
Major reason: the typical seasonal run of a series has dropped significantly. IIRC Star Trek’s
first season (Kirk & co.) had 33 episodes. A modern series will be lucky to clear 20, and most
of those will be clustered around the sweeps months (and November not too surprisingly is
a sweeps month). So for your favorite series which starts in September it is a matter of
anxiously waiting for the new eps while getting bored during the many reruns in between.
Why is that?
It’s becoming a bit more common for networks to not re-run shows during the season. Some shows just don’t do very well in re-runs. For example (at least according to The Soup last week), Lost is now on hiatus until February (I don’t watch the show). I know the same thing happens during the summer now, where they used to re-run shows, and now they show new programs. Same thing here - they show new shows with limited (shorter) commitments during the “break” times. If they pan out, then they get an additional commitment with a longer run next time.
The reason for fewer episodes is, of course, money. Shows are expensive, so they’ve been cutting back the number for quite some time.
The reason they have fewer reruns is that a lot of shows today have ongoing plotlines. If you already know how the plotlines resolve, there’s not as much incentive to watch the show again. At best, it will only attract new viewers, and, if the show is a hit, this is going to be a smaller number than normal.
You can see certain shows rerun all the time: The CSI and L&O franchise are shown in rerun whenever they need to fill time. But these are stand-alone shows. A show like Lost, with an ongoing plot, is not going to draw the same, especially when viewers already know the plot twists.
But are they (adjusting for inflation) any more expensive than they were in the '60s?
If so, why?
My guess is that they are more expensive even adjusting for inflation, because of the increased competition. Competition from the increased number of TV channels, movies on DVD, video games, the internet, etc. Shows need to be flashier to grab attention, therefore, more money is spent on most shows.