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Rerun van Pelt is the name of Linus and Lucy's younger brother in the comic strip Peanuts.
Fred "Rerun" Stubbs was a character played by Fred Berry on
the 1970s television show What's
Happening!!.
A rerun (or sometimes, repeat) is a re-airing of an episode of a television program. Some viewers find reruns annoying, although many views appreciate the opportunity to
re-watch a programme they enjoyed or watch one the missed the first time round. There are two types of reruns, those that occur
during a hiatus, and those that occur when a
program is syndicated.
In the UK, the word "rerun" is rarely used, instead "repeat" is the more common term. "Repeat" is also used to for programmes
shown less than a week after the original broadcast, before the next episode of the series.
During Hiatus
In the USA, most episodic television shows run only during a certain season. In the northern hemisphere, this season is
normally from early September until late May. In the summer (and sometimes around the holidays) shows stop filming. No more
episodes are being produced, so the network airs previous episodes in their stead.
Syndication
When a television program becomes popular, it often goes into syndication. This is when many episodes of the program are sold
as a package for a large sum of money. Generally the buyer is either a cable company or a host of local television stations. Often, programs are
not economical until they are sold for syndication. Unfortunately since local television stations often need to sell more
commercial airtime than network affiliates, syndicated shows are usually cut to make room for extra commercials.
In the United Kingdom, most drama and comedy series run for shorter seasons - typically 6, 7 or 13 episodes - and are then
replaced by others. An exception is soap operas with are either on all year
round (for example EastEnders and Coronation Street), or are on for a season similar to the American system.
As in the US, fewer new episodes are made in summer. Until recently it was also common practice for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 to
repeat classic shows from their archives, but this has more or less dried up in favour of newer (and cheaper) formats like
reality shows, except on the BBC where older BBC shows, especially sitcoms like Dad's Army and Fawlty Towers, are frequently repeated.
Syndication did not exist in Britain until the arrival of satellite, cable and later digital television from 1989 on. Nowadays the UK has many channels (for example UKTV Gold and
Plus - formerly
Granada Plus) which repackage and rebroadcast "classic" programming from both sides of the Atlantic. Many of these channels, like their US counterparts, make commercial timing cuts. Some channels get
around this by running shows in longer time slots, and critics of timing cuts see no reason why the other channels should not do
the same.
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