Oh look, Frasier’s on. Didn’t I just see the last episode? Yes, I remember, it was very touching and I was quite sad to see the rerun cycle come to an end. Ah, Nelonen is doing what Sub did with Friends. They’re running the entire show again on the same slot. In fact, any day of the week you can catch a number of 90s hit shows that seem be stuck in a scheduling hamster wheel. And as if this was not enough, we’ve seen the emergence of a new phenomenon on Finnish TV: the marathon broadcast.
Ok, reruns are cheap. But for all their cost-efficiency, is circulating the same shows over and over again really the best way to fill the programme hours? The Simpsons has been around for 20 years, you’d think there were enough episodes to keep pulling new ones out of the pile.
The shows that keep getting most reruns are all major hits from the 1990s or late 80s. Perhaps that’s because the generation that came of age during the 90s, my generation, remain the greatest bunch of TV-addicts in history.
Growing up before the internet spread to every last outhouse and before TV turned into a reality format dumping ground, this generation fostered a deep and meaningful relationship with the idiot box. For us, these shows don’t grow old, they just get better. For us, there’s always reason enough to run the entire series of Melrose Place from start to finish. When nobody else watches TV, we do.
Matti Koskinen
