Television Repeats: Who Isn’t A Fan?

JOSHUA OLADEJI

Pop culture is relentless in giving access to virtually limitless entertainment. With the eager anticipations to season finales and binge-watching episodes, the question ‘’why do people watch the same thing over and over again?’’ has been at the hearts and minds of many for years.  Viewers have sought out familiar entertainment for specific reasons, with one of them being to recapture lost feelings of nostalgia. However, with so many amazing television shows and movies produced and broadcast around the world on a daily basis, it gets one wondering: how do you catch up with all of it? Hard core television fans always have that story of getting home late at some point, the dire consequence of which is missing the eagerly awaited episode of that addictive TV show. On many occasions Repeats and Reruns have helped save face from this disappointment as viewers can often rest assured that a repeat broadcast is somewhere in the works.

This has become a huge part of the television viewing culture – many people have very busy lives and they just can’t keep up with the deadlines offered by live shows. They want to be able to know that when they decide to return to the couch they can catch up on all they have missed. Others just want to relive those TV moments again, if you really enjoyed watching a TV show or a football game you probably would want to see it again. This means that you never get to miss anything because Reruns are fixed to accommodate viewership for everybody. There are some counter arguments though, as some argue that the advent of the internet and other innovations in technology has put power in the hands of the audience who can now decide to stream a show or buy a movie they really like to see online whenever they want – very much like what people do with the DStv Explora decoder.

From the back-end business side, producers have also benefited greatly from the use of television repeats globally, especially through syndication. Television and film productions are usually very expensive and producers have been able to use rebroadcasts and syndication to cover this large overhead, ultimately assuring the survival of the productions. Although sometimes Repeats have managed to be annoying especially when they have been scheduled uninspiringly, I feel people generally benefit more when they are able to catch the favorite shows and re-watch them at their convenience.