When used to refer to the rebroadcast of a single episode, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz are generally credited as the inventors of the rerun.
Buoyed by strong word of mouth, the rerun of Patterns drew more viewers than the first run as people who had missed the first airing a month prior tuned in to catch the reairing.
However, television networks in the United States began making kinescope recordings of shows broadcast live from the East Coast.
Few people anticipated the long life that a popular television series would eventually have in syndication, so most performers signed contracts that limited residual payments to about six repeats.
This situation went unchanged until the mid-1970s, when contracts for new shows extended residual payments for the performers, regardless of the number of reruns, while tape recycling effectively came to an end (rapid advancements in digital video in the 1990s made preservation far more economical) and the Copyright Act of 1976 extended copyright terms to much longer lengths, eliminating the need for renewal.
The Program Exchange was once the most prominent barter syndicator in United States television, offering mostly older series from numerous network libraries.
[4] With the growing availability of cable and satellite television channels, as well as over-the-air digital subchannels, combined with a growing body of available postsyndication programming, a handful of specialty channels have been built solely or primarily to run former network programming, which otherwise would no longer be in syndication.
Depending on the programs chosen for a classic network, running the format can be very inexpensive, due to many shows beginning to fall into the public domain.
On cable and satellite, channels that devote at least some of their program schedule to postsyndication reruns include Nick at Nite, TV Land, TBS, USA Network, WGN America, Logo TV, Pop, Discovery Family, Game Show Network, Boomerang, Nicktoons, INSP, fetv, RFD-TV, and the Hallmark Channel.
Some view this development as a rising new idea in the industry of reruns as an increasingly major revenue source in themselves instead of the standard business model as a draw for audiences for advertising.
While there were videotape releases of television series before DVD, the format's limited content capacity, large size and reliance on mechanical winding made it impractical as a widespread retail item.
TV Guide originally used the term "rerun" to designate rebroadcast programs, but abruptly changed to "repeat" between April and May in 1971.
In the United Kingdom, most drama and comedy series run for shorter seasons – typically six, seven, or thirteen episodes – and are then replaced by others.
This was particularly common with sitcoms such as The Office, which had very low ratings in its first series, as well as a poor reception from both critics and focus groups and was almost cancelled.
[7] The series started to gain traction once the BBC decided to repeat it in a different timeslot and The Office went on to be an award-winning and critically acclaimed show which has regularly featured in lists of the Best Sitcoms ever.
This was due to the unions' fear that the channels filling their schedules with repeats could put actors and other production staff out of work as fewer new shows would be made.
[citation needed] It also had the unintentional side effect of causing many programs to be junked after their repeat rights had expired, as they were considered to be of no further use by the broadcasters.