Who Needs Original Programming? TV’s Pandemic Strategies Bear Repeating

For twenty years, much of the conversation about television has been dominated by first-run, original, exclusive programming. First, cable channels followed the lead of players like HBO that developed must-see content like Sex and the City and The Sopranos to motivate subscriptions and promise viewers access to what could not be found elsewhere. With the growth of streaming, competition between subscription services only intensified. Every network, channel, and streamer raced to secure original programming, leading to so-called “peak TV,” where more new content was being made than ever before. Whether Netflix, Amazon, AMC, or the Hallmark Channel, programmers devoted billions to acquire original, never-before-seen content.   As critics made sense of this deluge and audiences set about tracking it down across so many outlets, 21^st-century television thus far appears to have been a pursuit of the “new.” 

In 2020, however, it becomes easier to see how the rerun persists as the backbone of television. As Variety reports, numerous television outlets are “stretching their horizons” by acquiring rights to content that has previously aired elsewhere to fill the gaps in their program offerings. With the production pipeline disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, peak TV overabundance gives way to scarcity. Programmers at the broadcast networks cannot acquire enough new, original content to assemble their traditional fall schedules, and thus have looked to programming that has already succeeded elsewhere as an important new primetime building block. While these networks had largely given up the 20^th-century practice of rerunning individual episodes in favor of a steadier supply of new, original programming, now they license whole seasons of programming for a second-run performance. 

This readiness to embrace the rerun, however, reveals that the power of the new has been somewhat exaggerated. In embracing the alternative values of repetition, these television services are merely tapping into the logics that have always shaped television industries and television cultures, even if sometimes ignored in favor of the shiny, new, and exclusive. 

As television historian Derek Kompare writes in his brilliant book Rerun Nation: How Repeats Invented American Television, the medium has been fundamentally defined by its capacity for repetition of content. Whether it was early television becoming a new distribution window for Hollywood films, series producers recognizing that successful sales in second-run syndication could recoup the costs of first-run production, or the capacity of the rerun to support a sense of shared cultural heritage, Kompare explains how television has been defined by a “regime of repetition.” 

That regime never went away—no matter how sharp the peaks of “peak TV.” Although HBO and Netflix emphasis original, exclusive programming, their empires rest equally upon the access provided consumers to repeatable library content. As much Netflix Originals, for example, get pride of place in the interface design of programming menus, recommendations, and in corporate press releases, Netflix delivers viewers an ability to see what has already been seen elsewhere. Library programs like The Office and Friends proved to be stronger draws than the original programming in which Netflix invested billions. Indeed, that is why fledgling streamers like Peacock and HBOMax, respectively, have re-secured them at great expense to support their own new services. 

Notably, even though broadcast networks seemed to divest in the rerun in their move toward year-round original content, these pandemic-response programming solutions are not clear breaks with prior strategy. As TV scholar Amanda Lotz shows, media conglomeration has long supported practices of “reallocation” in which series developed for one network or channel can be redeployed on another under the same corporate banner. 

A focus on original programming also obscures much of the actual experiences of watching linear and non-linear television both. While traditional broadcast networks and cable channels foreground original primetime programming, at most hours the viewer is more likely to find reruns of old series and the same movies that have been playing on repeat for weeks. In non-linear streaming environments, viewer choice can make linear, scheduled repetition seem oppressive. Yet, when presented with a menu of options, many choose to reengage old favorites, or to catch up on program missed when first available somewhere else, rather than focusing on what is brand new and exclusive. The countless podcasts and YouTube videos devoted to guiding viewers through a series rewatch or other repetition experiences demonstrate that television culture is no freer of the rerun now than it was in when local broadcast stations made the bulk of their programming decisions by selecting from series available to repeat in syndication. If anything, reruns have become even more embedded in the rituals of watching TV. 

Make no mistake—the television industries are in a crisis. Yet embrace of the rerun is not a consequence of that disruption; it is the continuity by which television hopes to repeat into the future.