It's taken more than 50 years of TV evolution, but the prime-time rerun is rapidly becoming an endangered species.
With the six broadcast networks unveiling their 2004-05 schedules to advertisers this week, it's become clearer than ever that TV bosses are taking sledgehammers to the templates that have ruled nightly household viewing since the waning years of the Truman administration.
As they try to stave off fierce cable competition and chase the young adults prized by advertisers, networks are loading up on high-concept reality shows and rejiggering lineups at the last minute. As a result, they're using reruns more sparingly than ever or, in many cases, banishing them entirely.
Admittedly, this is one funeral that might not attract many mourners. Indeed, viewers have grown so averse to repeats that a few years back, NBC tried to reposition the encores with a chirpy marketing slogan: "If you haven't seen it, it's new to you!" But the decline of reruns signals larger changes that are having an enormous effect on viewers as well as on the TV industry itself.
In a rare act of public self-reproach, networks are admitting that, if anything, they've waited too long to nix the stale stuff in their schedules. During the 1993-94 season, broadcasters controlled a 60% share of TV viewership. For the 2002-03 season, that figure was barely 50% -- thanks in large part, executives say, to too many network reruns.
"It's why cable has made its headway and why we [broadcasters] have had significant audience erosion," said Fox Entertainment President Gail Berman, who will officially unveil her network's schedule in New York this afternoon. "If you're not giving the audience what they want, they're going to go somewhere else to get it."
NBC and Fox are casting aside the traditional September-May season and aggressively touting year-round schedules, with no repeats for such series as NBC's "The West Wing." Because the White House drama will produce only 22 episodes next season, the network will fill up the remaining weeks of the 35-week TV season with specials and eight episodes of the new drama "Revelations."
Next season Walt Disney Co.'s ABC, mired in fourth place behind CBS, NBC and Fox in the ratings, will show only first-run episodes of its cop show "NYPD Blue" and the spy drama "Alias." The WB network will do the same with its returning youth-oriented dramas "Everwood" and "One Tree Hill." UPN, which announces its schedule today, hasn't indicated whether it will cut back on repeats.
