Tv Film Repeats

[davebro]

Why do the (freeview) channels repeat movies for 5 or 6 weeks at a time. Surely if they have (say) 200 titles they could run through the whole lot then start again? I think "Back to the Future" has been on 4 or 5 times in the last couple of weeks. And "Valdez is Coming" with Burt Lancaster was repeated ad infinitum a couple of years ago but hasn't been shown since.

[ToraToraTora]

they'll show the most popular ones more often to maximise advertising revenue.

[hellywelly4]

It annoys me too. Sometimes the same ones are on different channels in the same week.
I have another moan - I rely on subtitles, particularly when it’s an American film, but there are some channels which have films with no subtitles. I have tried to watch them but have had to give up.

[chrissa1]

I enjoy ITV3 but, they have been showing the same episodes of A Touch Of Frost for years. We all know that the last series ended with one of the main characters being killed. That was years ago. Why haven’t they updated the series to show these episodes?

[Buenchico]

People seem to be assuming that TV companies hold 'in perpetuity' broadcasting rights to the movies in their vaults. I doubt that it's the case.

It's far more likely that a film distribution company will offer a movie to a TV company for (say) ten weeks for x thousand pounds, with the option to pay 20x thousand pounds if they want to buy the rights to show the movie indefinitely. As the majority of Freeview channels are operated on shoestring budgets (with many constantly close to bankruptcy) they simply can't afford the higher payments, so they only buy the broadcasting rights for a fairly short period. Once they've done so (and without the money to buy much else to fill their schedules), they're then more or less obliged to show the movie lots of times in order the get their money's worth from the deal.