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The Rise & Fall of the Rerun

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By Mo
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About This Episode

A hot afternoon in the mid ’80s: you walk in, drop your stuff, switch on the TV, and there’s that same Gilligan’s Island episode you’ve already seen a bunch of times — and it still feels comforting. For Gen X, reruns weren’t just background TV; they were part of our daily routine and taught us jokes, culture, and how to share a living room. Now, in a world of endless streaming choices, we’re looking back at how those old repeats shaped us and what it means that they’ve mostly disappeared.

(May contain some explicit language.)

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Show Notes

TRANSCRIPT

Jon Welcome back, Gen X Grown Up Podcast listener to this, the backtrack edition of the Gen X Grown Up Podcast. I am John. Joining me as always, of course, my man, George. Hey, George.
George Hey, how’s it going, guys?
Jon Good. You know that Mo is here. Hey, Mo.
Mo Hey, how’s it going?
Jon Good. So imagine this. It’s a hot afternoon in the mid 80s. You walk in, drop your stuff, switch on the TV. There’s that same Gilligan’s Island episode you’ve already seen a dozen times, but it still feels comforting.
Jon For Gen X, reruns weren’t just background TV. They were part of our daily routine. They taught us jokes, culture, and how to share the living room. Now, in a world of endless streaming choices, we’re looking back at how those old repeats shaped us and what it means that they’ve mostly disappeared for a large portion of the population.
Jon going to have tons on that in a moment. and we We actually had debates before we pushed recording about the validity of the premise of this episode. We’re going to cover all of that share with you. Before we do, it is time for our fourth listener email. The three of us are here. We’re allowed to listen. And if anyone else does and lets us know about it via email, you are the fourth listener. And for this episode, that is Michael F. He dropped us a line to the subject, Mad Magazine episode.
Jon Here’s what he had to say. John, Moe, and George. George’s in last place again. We’ve got him back where he needs to be.
George Ah.
Jon During the Mad Magazine episode, the Star Wars issue came up during the conversation. I have the Star Wars musical parody issue. I don’t believe it’s the specific issue you talked about, but I’d like to gift it to Moe because, well here we go, Moe.
Mo Oh, wow.
Mo What? What?
Jon During a later episode, a listener asked what candy bar from your childhood would you like to see return? I immediately thought about the Marathon bar, and it’s the same one Moe said.
Mo Oh, yeah.
Jon I felt like a kindred spirit moment with Moe right then.
Mo ah
Jon So if Moe or any of you would be interested in the magazine, please let me know. It’s a small gesture to express my gratitude for the content you all provide. How kind of you are, someone.
Mo Oh, that’s amazing.
Jon So Mo, if you’re interested, if you’re your spirit animal, Michael, would you would like to pick up the magazine?
Mo Oh, yeah.
Jon i Let me know.
Mo Hell yeah.
Jon I’ll give you his email address. You hit him up and you guys can work out the the.
Mo Logistics behind it.
Jon you know, the, the back alley exchange, whatever it takes to get that to you. Michael, I could gift it to you. He wraps up his email saying, hope you all have a wonderful holiday. This just came in during the holiday break. Michael f Thank you, Michael.
Jon Appreciate that. Uh, we struck on a lot of things. Remember the marathon bar? We talked about it.
Mo Yeah.
Jon If you’re listening now and your marathon bar is like, Oh God. Yeah. Every time we mention it, you can still get it. If you go to Amazon, but search for curly whirly, it’s made in the UK.
Mo Curly, really?
Jon Um,
Mo Yeah.
Jon And it’s almost exactly, it’s even like in that ribbon, that like, like woven shape.
Mo the The weave kind of thing.
Jon Yes.
Mo Yeah.
Jon It looks like a, like a braid. Yeah. Yeah. So marathon bar still out there called curly, whirly sort of, you still pick it up and Mo’s going to get a free magazine because he loved it so much. So. If you would like your email, if you would like your email feature here on the show, it’s drop dead easy. Just hit us up at podcast at genxgrownup.com. Read every single email. Most of them, like Michael’s, especially if there’s a gift involved, it’s going to make its way to this show. All right. Get back from this quick break. We are jumping into the rise and fall of the rerun.
Jon Stick around.
Mo So I want to kick off this discussion with just talking about like, what was it like to just live with, you know appointment TV and reruns?
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo You know, you know, 70s, 80s, you know, really until even before like VHS tapes came popular, you know, you were you weren’t in control of your own destiny as far as what you watch on TV as you are today.
Jon Yeah.
Jon we talk about this in passing a lot, appointment TV, you got to watch, you got to pick it up, but we have not ever specifically just zeroed in on what it was about it.
Mo hmm.
Jon And it, and it’s, If you weren’t there, if you’re listening to this podcast, you weren’t around at that time. It was very much, hey, look, networks had shows. You had these three networks that had the best shows, CBS, NBC, ABC. was before Fox.
Jon Maybe had some reruns on, you know, on Channel 94, 62 or whatever crazy UHA if you had, right?
Mo Yeah.
Jon but you had And you had your shows. In the last episode, we were talking about, you know, I love my you know Incredible Hulk and Six Million Dollar Man and whatever. And you look at the TV guy, you’re like, what is Steve Austin doing this week?
Jon Oh, it’s it’s a repeat from last you know earlier in the season or last year or something. So then you knew you could skip it and watch something else because you didn’t have the luxury of, as you said, no recording on VHS or doing something else. You got what you got. Whatever they aired when they aired it, you were at their mercy.
Mo Yeah, I mean, really part of the limitation was that there was only so many channels, you know. um
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo I feel spoiled because I grew up in New York and we had, you know, three network channels and then we had, you know, the subsidiary channels like Fox at the time was just a subsidiary channel.
Jon Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mo it wasn’t a network at the time.
Jon o
Mo WPIX. We had a whole bunch of local ones that just really, they played like a whole bunch of the reruns during the day. They, did you know, they took the syndicated shows, but because we only had three channels, you know, you, you really were limited as what you could watch.
Mo And it’s a really big conundrum. If you wanted to watch something that was on the same time on two different channels, cause you’re basically out of luck.
Jon You
Mo You know, you, you had to pick one and that was it.
Jon got anything worth jumping in on, George? He cleared that off.
George No, mean, right now we’re talking about TV watching experience more than reruns, so.
Jon As kids, yeah. Yep. Okay. Oh, so here’s, here’s, uh, let move this down.
Jon I’m going to grab the, talking about the, okay, jump in here, talk about the catching an episode you’ve never seen before, which is, um,
Jon One benefit of the reruns, other than if you missed it because two things were on at the same time that you experienced, that I remember coming across, you know, maybe I saw, this happened to me a lot even in, um like in the Nick at Night days when they would air old TV shows that we used to watch as kids on Nick at Night, is…
Mo Oh, right.
Jon You thought you’ve seen them all, right? Because you’re like, oh, I know Taxi backwards and forwards.
Mo Right.
Jon I’ve seen all of them. And then all of a sudden on one random night, you look in the TV guy, you turn on the TV and you’re like, wait a minute. Taxi’s been off the air for years. How is there a new episode? And it’s because it’s it’s because you missed it the first time, but you didn’t know you missed it the first time. And then it pops up because you only really had, often you had two chances. You had the first run, you had the rerun that season. And the next season also went into syndication. You didn’t get the opportunity to to go back and look at it.
Mo Oh, yeah, for sure. um And there’s certain shows that like um we would not even be exposed to or but have liked if it wasn’t for the fact that there were reruns syndications like Star Trek.
Mo you know I never saw Star Trek on primetime.
Jon Mm-hmm. Right.
Mo no Ever.
Jon Because that was 66 through 69.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Right.
Mo you know So the only time I ever saw it was after school. It was like 5.30 or something like that that. It was on Channel 11. I still remember it. But there was a whole after school kind of like system where it was like you got home.
Mo There was usually cartoons, then reruns, then news. you know
Jon he
Mo The evening news, and then went to the whole evening Then you went to your network channels and the other stuff at that point. But again, there was just so many shows like the Brady Bunch, ah you know, good times. I mean, there were shows, like said, I’d never ever would have watched if it wasn’t for the fact that they were on syndication and shown as reruns on a different channel than where they originally aired.
Jon And that was a way that i connected with my older brother because, you know, you know that George and I are the biggest Star Trek nerds. And I didn’t want to watch Star Trek, but he was bigger than me. He was 10 years older than me. And it was after school and Star Trek was on. He just didn’t care what cartoon I was watching. He just…
Jon He walked up and he turned it to the TV when Star Trek was on. And it was, I either had to stop watching TV or watch Star Trek with him. it was that syndicated rerun that allowed me to actually get exposed to shows, like you said, that I wouldn’t have otherwise seen at all.
Mo Yeah, it’s funny because they you mentioned at the opening how, you know, you watch Gilligan’s Island. It’s the same episode you’ve seen a dozen times.
Jon Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mo I think I have seen every episode of Gilligan’s Island at least like five times, you know, just because, you know, after school, turning it on, it was always on every day where you think about they come up with 26 episodes a season.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo I think back then is what it was. And now they’re showing it five days a week. So they could blow through a season worth of shows in little over a month. yeah So you know so they then they started recycling again.
Jon Right. Yeah.
Mo So instead of a half-year cycle, you were watching the same shows every six to eight weeks. The same shows were coming on again and again and again.
Jon Let’s see. Oh, you caught caught that one. Got it. Get off there.
Jon What happened? Oh, actually got rid of that one. I didn’t mean to. I clicked on the wrong spot. Ba-ba-ba-ba. So how do we find the back end of this to get into the next segment? So we’re talking about where they were.
Jon The next one is where you talk about how the reruns happened, right?
Mo Yeah.
Jon So we need to get to there. I don’t know if the cultural canon makes any sense in this discussion, probably.
Mo Nah, we could check it. Yeah, it’s
Jon It probably doesn’t.
Jon What about the humor? I know you mentioned that in there. Like what kind of…
Mo just… Well, actually, um and know so I can bring up, like, I got some ideas on this.
Jon Okay.
Mo All right.
Jon Okay.
Mo he
Jon yep Jump in.
Mo and Another thing that was really funny is that, you know, so you hear you have these old TV shows, you know, that’ve been on that haven’t been on the air for five, ten years, so even longer sometimes, like the Honeymooners and stuff.
Mo But every one of my friends has seen them.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo You know, like everybody I know has seen these same shows. And we can sit there and talk and joke about Gil Gonzalo or how hot Ginger was or whatever it was that we talked about back then when we were kids. Yeah.
Mo but But again, like I said, it’s it was just such a big part of me growing up. I think of any Gen X kid who watched TV a lot growing up that, you know, it’s it just – oh, sorry.
Mo Where is it going with that?
Mo It was such a big part of, you know just the whole way that we watch TV and what we consumed and really how we spent a lot of our afternoons that, you know after this, I want kind of get into just kind of a little bit behind the scenes.
Mo You know, first off, like, you know why certain shows get reruns and certain ones didn’t, you know where do they air? Why do they air there? So I think that’s something we could talk about in the next segment.
Jon Okay.
Jon All right. All right. Stick around. We’ll be right back.
Jon So, so and the first one was kind of about our watching habits when we were younger. This one, how would you summarize this? s Indication of.
Mo This is syndication, like the whole 100-episode rule. um Like local stations, like, you know, really much like they said, they were just… If wasn’t for reruns, they wouldn’t exist for the most part.
Mo like They had one or two original shows, and that’s about it. Yeah.
Jon Where do you think is the right place to interject how um your whole your whole thrust, George, how reruns are still very much a thing, but it’s for a subset of the population? is that fit in here, probably? Because it’s the reruns and why they’re there. At some point, we need to, I would say early on in the show, touch on that.
George I mean, that feels like maybe it’s more of a part of the decline at the end because…
Mo Oh, and you could bring up like, it’s not really, it’s not really client.
Jon Oh, oh, oh, okay.
Mo It’s…
Jon Oh, maybe down there. Okay, because what’s here? All right, all right.
Jon Okay, well, i can I can get in and ask you, Mo, about your research and and what you found out about, and we can start our discussion. we didn’t You didn’t get a chance to talk at all, George, in there.
Jon Do you have any of these that you want to grab or topics in here?
George No, I mean, so the thing that we, no, it’s fine.
Jon i don’t want to abandon in you.
George I mean, it’s, there’s nothing really for me to do in this because I didn’t do any research on it. And that’s why I was saying, you know, maybe if we did it as a round robin discussion as opposed to adhering to the list, but we’re kind of adhering to the list.
George So, um, I’m there, if, if there’s a place, then I’ll pop in, but there’s probably not going to be a lot.
Mo We’re trying to make sure we hit the some of the beats, but yeah.
Jon Well, once you heard, people people love to hear you. All right. well I’ll get in and mention just what you said to set it up, and we’ll start our discussions. All right. In five, four, three.
Jon Now, Mo, you mentioned in the in the last segment that we wanted to jump into kind of why reruns, and not so much why they were a thing. We know the why they were a thing. It had to do with like we I guess we kind of don’t how many episodes there are, how many needed to produce. And the fact that there was a numbers game being played that didn’t result in a new episode of a show every single week. Right.
Mo Oh, yeah, for sure. um You know, there was this, I guess they call it the 100 episode rule. And i don’t know if it was a hard, fast rule or a guideline. But that was like the the magic for a ah TV show that if they hit that 100 episodes, they were in good shape because even if they got canceled, the odds are that some TV station was going to pick them up in syndication.
Mo you know, because you had to have at least 100 episodes because I guess that would last, you know, 20 weeks worth of programming for a TV show normally, you know, because they show it every single day.
Jon Okay. Oh,
Jon because you mentioned a second ago, like maybe there’d be, you could run through the whole season really fast because you’re running every day or a couple of days.
Mo Yeah. you know And like I mentioned before, like you know those local stations, you know i think I’m not trying to figure out how the costing works on them, but obviously these shows were much, much cheaper than trying to do a whole original show and put it on the air.
Mo Plus, it I guess it worked for a time, again, because things were limited and because you had limited options, you know, people were almost, as long as you did something more interesting than what the neighboring channels did, you were better. You know, it’s like, you don’t have to be the fastest person to, you know, outrun a bear. You just have faster the person next to you.
Mo It’s kind of like that. Like, you didn’t have to be the most interesting show, but you had to be the most interesting at that time, you know, for that demographic that you’re trying to hit.
Jon Just don’t be the slowest person. Yeah.
Jon And we were, we were latchkey kids.
Mo The. Good.
Jon We’ve talked about this many times and, and you can say this true of all of TV, but reruns too were kind of, they were used as a babysitter.
Mo hmm.
Jon They were, especially when they went into syndication and we saw that episode again and again, we’ve talked about how it helped us to bond with our our siblings and whatever, especially with my brother and star Trek, but because it was so familiar and it was inoffensive and often it was older TV shows, ah Flintstones and cartoons and stuff like that.
Mo Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jon I remember there was a block of stuff. They didn’t have like Andy Griffith. And then you had, uh, it went Gomer pile, USMC. That was a spinoff of that.
Jon And they do all the rural things or be, uh, Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres and all the country shows they would lump together. And you would just, I would just sit and just watch them one after another, after another. and Before you knew it, my parents were home or it was time for time for dinner or whatever it was. it had I had burned through like three hours of my afternoon.
Mo you know And it’s really amazing how much we could watch the same shows. I mean, I say the same shows, but actually the same episodes over and over again. like You really didn’t care.
Jon Mm-mm.
Mo he said because I feel kind of like we were not very discerning ah viewers back then as kids.
Jon Mm-mm.
Mo you know But um another thing I thought was interesting is that you look at these TV shows and a lot of them…
Jon he
Mo Hold on second.
Jon Dog noises.
Mo Yeah.
Jon The bark color is working great.
Mo He burned out the freaking battery on it
Mo it. Sorry about that.
Jon yep you’re good.
Mo But it was just kind of fun. it was a ah Oh, I was saying it’s kind of interesting how like some of these old shows were probably more popular to us as kids than when they first aired. You know, I mean, if you think about it, like Flintstones, well, look at like Flintstones.
Jon what what What do you mean by that? More popular to us than me.
Mo That was actually a network TV show at one point. It was on primetime, you know, and it came on.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Jon Right?
Mo But, you know, as kids, you know, my dad probably could watch it and couldn’t remember episode. I pretty much remember every single Flintstones episode that ever happened.
Jon Oh, so you know better than him. You saw it
Mo Yeah, I saw I saw the same episodes more often than he did.
Jon Yeah.
Mo I saw them over and over and over again. You know, some of them, I think, became almost like almost part of our generation as opposed to the previous generation in a way.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Jon Hmm. Yeah.
George You just said something that i I don’t necessarily agree with. You said they were more popular in the reruns than they were in the original airing. But if they weren’t really popular in the original airing, they wouldn’t have gotten to your 100 episode limit to become reruns or syndicated in the first place.
Mo Well, true. I mean, i so but I guess I say the more.
George Because you’re talking about two different things. You’re talking about reruns versus syndication. Right. So reruns, in my opinion, are the shows that they air while the show is still live on the air during its regular seasons that happen because they don’t or they only air 26 episodes per season.
Jon Right. Mm hmm.
George But there’s more than 26 weeks in a year and they fill up the summer months with the shows that people might have missed during the spring or fall. And that’s a rerun. Syndication is completely different because the show is off the air.
George It’s been, you know, canceled or retired or whatever the case may be for the show. And now it’s been brought back because it was super popular. And they realized that more people would continue to watch it because it was so popular in its original run.
Jon Yeah, it’s a very good distinction, too. I mean, it’s it’s like this this thing that eats its own tail. It’s like, I’d agree, the definition of rerun technically is in the initial run.
Jon And we had those and they were a very different thing than the syndication.
Mo In the same season in a way.
Jon That’s that’s a really good point. I think um the interesting point Mo was making though, like the Flintstones is a really great example. They probably didn’t know the Flintstones, though they grew up with it in its initial run.
Jon as well as we did, because we got to see it so much and would not have, it has its initial popularity that gave it its longevity. It wasn’t until syndication that we got to see it. And it was because they watched it and had their rerun cycle.
Mo Yeah, and there were, i mean, George, I think you’re absolutely right. There were a couple exceptions where I know things were actually syndicated before they were done, like MASH.
George Mm-hmm.
Mo You know, MASH was, early season MASH were already syndication before it it ended.
Jon e Really?
Jon I didn’t know that.
Mo Oh yeah, you could watch, I could watch MASH.
Jon i didn’t I thought syndication didn’t happen until it was all done. Really? Huh.
Mo Nope, because they’re never going to go back because, you know, because a rerun, like George mentioned, if it’s season five, they showed the season five rerun and they’re done.
Jon e
Mo You know that channel CBS, wherever it aired, isn’t going to show any more of those episodes. I can go back and show season five again.
Jon Right. Right.
Mo So then they started syndicating the earlier episodes. So you can rewatch the first few seasons of MASH on syndication while it was still creating new episodes on CBS.
Jon Oh.
Jon I… I thought it was very binary. I thought it was one or the other. is it still running or is it still not?
George Well, I mean, there is the the classic example for us, John, Star Trek Next Generation, which I put in the list for us to talk about, because it’s one of the rare shows that was sold in syndication to start.
Mo Hmm.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Jon That’s right. It didn’t have a network.
Mo There was whole so there was a whole story behind that, right?
George Right? It didn’t air as a network show.
Mo Because they couldn’t…
Jon Yeah.
George Yeah, they at the time, nobody wanted to put Star Trek on the air because the original series didn’t do well. That first movie was meh, but…
Mo Yeah.
George they just didn’t believe that science fiction could really hold its ratings in primetime TV because when was the last science fiction show before the early nineties that you had?
Jon Mm-hmm.
George I mean, you didn’t have the quantum leaps.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George You didn’t have any of that stuff before this. And the last things you really had were things like Battlestar Galactica, 1980 and Buck Rogers season two and those kinds of shows.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George So they didn’t believe it could hold its water.
Jon Yeah. yeah
George So The only way they could get it on the air was to sell it through Paramount’s syndication system.
Jon yeah What’s funny is that even though it was it was a syndicated show from its start… It was still structured just like a network show.
Jon They only got like 26 episodes a season or 22 during the writer’s strike when whatever, but still same idea.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon But I remember enduring reruns of the syndicated Star Trek, even though it was a syndicated show because the, and that’s where the little UHFs grabbed those things, right? UHFs that didn’t have their own original programming.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Even in syndication, they were behaving like the networks were with this thing. Yeah, we’re going to run it for, we what did you get? Eight or 10, 12 episodes, and then you run 10 or 12 repeats. Then you get 10 or, you get mid-season break, you get 10 or 12.
Jon And then you get the repeats from those. um i remember waiting all summer to find out what happened to with the Borg and Picard, but, and watching repeats of season four leading up to that.
George right
Jon And I’m not sure how much, how much I realized at the time that it was modern syndication acting like first run television because it was first run just in syndication.
Mo Yeah, I don’t. Maybe you guys remember this not when Next Generation first came out. Was it shown daily?
Jon No, no, no, no.
George No.
Mo It was once a week.
Jon Yeah.
George Saturdays. Well, depending on your local station here, it was Saturday.
Jon Wherever you live.
Mo OK.
Jon Yeah. Different stations. Yeah. Yeah.
George Yeah.
Mo So that’s definitely that’s also very unusual for syndication that because normally they just, you know, because they pay for the show.
Jon Yep.
Mo So they probably aired it as much as they humanly could normally. Right. To get as much out of each one they could.
Jon Right. But like I would think it was part of the agreement. They’re like, we don’t have a real network, but in syndication, it’s going to first run for you.
Mo okay
Jon So it’s not, it’s in a way it’s not repeats, right? It’s, it’s syndication that aren’t repeats, which is kind of diametrically opposed to what you think of in terms of syndication.
Mo Yeah.
George Yeah, because, I mean, when you’re talking strictly about reruns, if we go by the definition we think we might have agreed to, during the original airing of a series, you get a rerun in the place of when that show was supposed to air.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George So if that show aired Friday nights at 8 p.m.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George and they didn’t have a new show, then it was a rerun that would air in that same slot because what the network wanted was people to tune in and they wanted to see BJ and the Bear at 8 o’clock on Friday,
George But they didn’t want to see a new show because they couldn’t afford 52 new shows every year.
Jon e
Mo Right. Mm-hmm.
George They could only afford 26. And that was kind of the model and the standard. When you get to syndication and to Mo’s point about airing as much as possible, those are oftentimes different stations, different networks that are airing a show that may be aired somewhere else.
George So they’re paying royalties to that original rights owner and they’re airing them as often as possible because they started then to do the things of binge blocks.
George Right. And we have binging now in first run.
Jon Right.
George Right. Netflix will drop an entire series at once or a Amazon Prime or whoever.
Jon Right.
Mo Oh, yeah, yeah.
George Right. But back then, that was when we first, syndication, when it really got popular in the late 70s, early 80s, that’s when we really started getting these binge blocks where for an entire weekend, watch all of All in the Family, right?
Mo yeah Oh, yeah.
Jon Load it up. and the
George And you, yeah, you get like 40 episodes that they would just run them back to back to back.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George As soon as we did the super stations and stuff where things started airing 24 hours, as opposed to during the cycle that would end at midnight.
Mo Yeah.
Mo Yeah, so that’s a lot of time to fill. Yeah.
George Yeah.
Jon so
George I think they they realized they they had a lot more slots than they thought, and they weren’t terribly creative with how they filled them.
Jon I’m trying to think back. I don’t necessarily remember when I realized that that TV shows were on almost sat on a schedule.
Jon I knew they werere on a schedule. This airs this day and this time, but that they weren’t just giving me a new show every time. I didn’t necessarily, because I didn’t think of TV back in the 60s and 70s and 80s.
Jon We were growing up. I didn’t think of TV in terms of like, oh, I must see season three, episode four. Now I must see season three, episode five. It was just Bionic Man, Bionic Man.
Jon I just wanted to see it if it was on.
George Exactly.
Jon And I didn’t realize, If I missed one, it didn’t occur to me that I missed it. It was just I didn’t get to see it last week. It didn’t occur to me that that one’s gone to me until it reruns.
Mo All right. Yeah. yeah
Jon And then it was like gradually later you go, wait a minute. I feel like I’ve seen this one before. Oh yeah. But it was it was subtle. It was almost like this epiphany that, wait a minute, they’re running them two times.
Jon Maybe the one I missed was a repeat. I don’t even know. But it, it was almost like the, like you find out there’s no Easter bunny. Like one of those things, like, wait a minute. But you’re not making a Gomer Pyle still. That’s not still a new show. Oh, that’s black. i thought it was black and white because because it was on channel 35. I didn’t it was black and white because it was from the 60s.
George In this segment, it’s important for us to talk about why reruns were so important to Gen X. We’ve talked about what they were. We’ve talked about, you know, the whole structure of reruns and syndication and everything.
George But why were they important specifically to Gen X?
Jon Yep.
George Well, since we’re all Gen Xers, I thought it would be a good idea of each one of us
Mo That’s the name.
Jon Yep.
George hedda had a main reason why it was important to us.
Jon ah duh
George And I’m going to start. For me, reruns were pivotal and important because of the lack of technology. Now, what do I mean by that?
George So television…
Mo Mm-hmm.
George was a medium that it aired and then it was gone. We didn’t have recorded devices in our homes, the TV stations and the movie studios and all those people had them, but we didn’t have them in our homes.
Mo Inferial, right?
George We didn’t have VHS tapes until the mid eighties.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George Well, I mean, I know we had them earlier that, but they weren’t,
Mo But no, the average person wouldn’t have it.
George widely popular yeah um we didn’t have uh streaming we didn’t have internet at all until early 90s um and that if you ever have watched a tv show in the compression formats of the early 90s you understand we didn’t really have tv shows online for a long time um but
Jon we We didn’t all have them.
Mo Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jon Yeah.
Jon he
Mo Yeah.
George For me, the technology, the lack of the ability to, as Mo put it earlier, control your own destiny with what you watched and when you watched it is the main reason why reruns are important to Gen X because we wanted to watch these shows, but we weren’t in control in two ways.
George Number one, the technology, which I just mentioned. And number two, our parents often controlled the television. So if John wanted to watch his Incredible Hulk, but his mother or father wanted to watch Dynasty, John was probably fucked.
Mo Mm hmm.
Mo Yeah, unless you happen to.
George And he didn’t get to watch Incredible Hulk until the rerun came in the summer when his parents might be a little bit more inclined to let him watch because their stuff was also off-season.
Mo have
Jon Yeah, yeah.
Mo Right.
Jon For me, that was Mission Impossible. That’s what Dad wanted to watch. The Rifleman. That’s what I wanted to watch. So luckily, we had a black and white TV in the bedroom, and it was a black and white show, so I could go and watch it.
George Ah…
Mo ah
George See, you had to have that extra TV.
Jon ah
Mo Yeah.
Jon I did. There’s a way to do it. And something else you mentioned, that… We’re talking about Gen X, obviously, but we were the beginning of the era, the very, very early Gen Xers, late boomers, that there was even such a thing possible as a rerun because I Love Lucy.
Jon I Love Lucy?
Mo I love loosely. Well, you do, but.
Jon I Love Lucy is, you can watch every episode I Love Lucy, but you can’t watch all the Honeymooners.
Mo Yes.
Jon Because the Honeymooners was live. It was not recorded.
Mo Oh, that’s right. Right.
Jon Very few were recorded, just like air check stuff.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George Right.
Jon What we have with the Honeymooners is like 20 or 30 episodes or something, maybe more than that, but it’s not everything.
George right
Jon But we could, the technology, not that we had, but that the networks had, they’re like, oh, Maybe it’s not live. Maybe it’s recorded in front of a live studio audience, though. That’s why they had the live studio audience, because everyone was used to TV shows being live.
Jon So they’re going to record it. Let’s do a studio audience so it feels live, at least. And then we were the beneficiaries of that technology that pushed the push the push. the Now you can have a rerun.
Jon There weren’t Honeymooners reruns. There were Honeymooners. And the next one came when the next one came.
George Right.
Jon But now there was a pop officer opportunity to see it later.
Mo see You guys at least had advantage that at least your parents wanted watch something that was semi-interesting. My dad wanted to watch something like Masterpiece Theater. All right. It was like, I was like, like so oh, he was totally.
George All right. Your dad was on the PBS network. He wasn’t…
Mo Yeah. Which I was like, oh, my God.
George yeah
Mo I was like, there’s just like, i just shoot me because I’ll go read a book.
Jon Right.
Mo I’m sorry.
Jon You’re like channel two, channel three. No, put it on channel u
Mo Yeah. for us, it was It was Channel was the one.
Jon Yeah, going deep in the dial.
Mo you know but um But yeah, no, I think those are really good points because like you said, it’s the, you know, like actually it didn’t even occur to me, John, that that’s why they sometimes say like, oh, lost episodes.
Mo Because they didn’t realize that somebody had recorded it somewhere and they could show it and they have it still somehow mysteriously.
Jon Yeah, yeah.
George Yeah.
Jon Like, oh, we found one. Yeah. Some way.
Jon Yeah. And some of them wildly variable quality because of that.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon Yeah.
George I mean, and to John’s other statement that he made, think about when it was the mid 80s, when we started getting the disclaimer at the beginning of the show, recorded live in front of a studio audience.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yep.
Mo Yeah.
Mo they even do that anymore ever like but has there ever been a show so like a modern show that has been done
Jon Mm-hmm. Yep.
George Right.
George I don’t hear that being said.
Jon I don’t think they say it. Yeah.
Jon A lot of them are.
George Oh, yeah.
Jon Yeah.
George Whose Line Is It Anyway still airing new episodes.
Jon Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Mo oh I meant like sitcom kind of serial like that kind of thing oh that was okay that was still done oh really okay i didn’t realize that oh I’m sure
Jon um ah Oh, Big Bang Theory.
George Yeah.
Jon Seinfeld. Oh, it’s all studio audience.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon Yeah. Now, they they sweetened the laugh track some, but yes, it was live studio audience.
George Right.
Jon Yeah. Yeah.
George Yeah, as a matter of fact, I have a, when I was living in Hollywood, I went to an episode of Whose Line is in Anyway, and there’s a part where they did something really funny, and I can actually pick out my laugh on the episode.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Oh, cool.
Jon Oh,
George Yeah.
Mo That’s awesome.
Jon I can hear ah the background. here’s me.
Mo Oh, man.
Jon Were you close to the front were you just let loud?
George No, no, I was just that loud.
Jon No, it it just got you.
George Yeah.
Mo ah That’s cool. Oh, man. Well, let me tell you that reruns are important to me because it’s a we talk about the know control your own destiny. There was nothing worse than missing beginning of a show like the first couple of episodes of a serialized show like like Twin Peaks was a big example you know those was David Lynch right is that that was very episodic it was one storyline that I’m sorry yeah it was one storyline for the whole season
Jon Oh, that was early in serialization.
George David Lynch.
Jon Everything was usually episodic, wasn’t it?
Jon Yeah. That’s serialized. You you mean, yeah. Yeah. That’s okay. I i don’t want if you i don’t want to sound like you’re wrong. Serialized means you’ve got to watch each one. Episodic means each episode stand on its own.
Mo okay
Jon I figured that out a few years ago. But anyway, I’ll give you that line again.
George Yeah.
Mo so ah Oh, yeah.
Jon And that was very early in like serialized storytelling. It wasn’t so episodic. You had to be there.
Mo You had to be there. And if you missed one or two episodes, you know you had to…
Jon Yeah.
Mo You know, you really were out of luck. Either you had to read us have someone tell you what happened, which is usually what happened, right?
Jon Yeah, spoiler.
Mo You got to a friend because there wasn’t the days of, oh, I’m just going to, you know, keep it a secret. I haven’t seen it yet. la la You know, that you see today. one’s waiting 26 weeks to talk about a show.
Mo They’re going to talk about it right then and there, you know?
Jon Right. Give me that kind of buffer.
Mo And there was a whole thing where it’s just like, especially that show, because it was so popular, and I felt bad because missed the first few episodes, watched the third one, didn’t understand the damn thing that was happening in it, and just never and I’ve never watched it since.
Mo So…
Jon Oh, no.
George Well, that I wanted to ask you a question then, because you’re talking about the reruns being important in that case. But if I’m not mistaken, I think Twin Peaks came out at a time when VCRs were a little bit more commonplace.
George So you it doesn’t sound like, though, that you either had access to a VCR or hadn’t recorded it so that you could keep, you know, catch up and watch it at some point.
Mo No.
Mo No, I didn’t at that time. We were kind of late to the VCR game in my house, so…
George Yeah.
Jon o
Mo you know Yeah.
Jon And then it was flashing 12, so you couldn’t schedule it. That’s the joke.
Mo but you But then again, it’s like it was the nice thing about the reruns, though, was like in a way, sometimes it was kind of nice missing some of those episodes because then it gave you something new in the summer to watch.
Jon Really?
Mo Yeah.
Jon Oh.
George Ah, like John’s Firefly episodes.
Mo Yeah, that he’s going to watch one day.
Jon I still have two. I still have two.
George Yep.
Mo you know, um I remember like one was like Taxi. I love Taxi. You know, I watched it when every but there was something i missed. And then there’s something to look forward to. You see the TV guide, you know, with the R next to it when there’s a rerun, you know, and I’m like, oh, that’s the episode I missed.
George It’s like a nice, it was like a nice surprise in your Cracker Jack box while you were eating Cracker Jacks. Like the show itself was the Cracker Jacks, but then you got that nice surprise of the episode you had never seen.
Mo Right.
Jon And it’s not just a stupid tattoo. It’s a real toy.
George Right.
Mo Yeah. yeah But it makes me wonder, is that why the shows back then were more episodic? Was because they didn’t want to rely on people having to watch it week by week by week.
Jon I’m sure. Oh, yeah. They couldn’t count on you having seen the last one or being here for the next one. Yeah.
George Well, because, and think about it, the only real serialized stuff you had up until mid-80s, late-80s, were the old serialized things on Saturday mornings in the movie theaters, like when our parents were kids.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Hmm?
George Like the Flash Gordons.
Jon Weren’t soap operas too, though? Those were, what that was their 50s and sixty s right?
George I mean, yeah, I guess you could count soap operas, but that’s not real TV.
Mo but people But people watch those religiously, though.
Jon Oh, you don’t miss soap operas.
George I mean, yeah.
Mo You don’t… you know My grandma…
George I don’t count soap operas as TV, though, but…
Jon ah Okay.
Mo Yeah. My grandmother, she’s going to watch her…
Jon Wow. Well, judgy.
Mo My grandma’s going to watch her stories. So… she don yeah
George Yeah, that’s true.
Jon Yeah. Yeah.
Mo But it’s funny, because those never did reruns, don’t believe.
Jon I don’t think they did. No, I don’t think they did.
Mo Right? They just ran.
George No?
Jon And again, a lot of early ones not recorded. Yeah.
George Well, and they also didn’t have a 26-episode season.
Jon lot of those early ones.
George They were 52 weeks a year.
Mo there were fifty Yeah, they were pretty much all year long, right?
Jon That’s right. They’re always on.
George Yeah.
Jon Yeah. And low budget and looked at.
Mo Yeah.
George Yeah.
Jon Although lot of great actors came out of the soap operas. Yeah.
George A lot of people developed their chops because they had to. Right?
Jon yeah Yeah. Yeah. Get into reps, right It’s one of those things. Is he getting all the reps, do something, what, 10,000 reps, and you’re finally going to be good at it?
George Right.
Jon 10,000 hours, whatever. That didn’t take long.
Mo yeah
Jon I try to think about it. Why was it for me as a Gen Xer? Why was it important? And it, the repetition, the light repetition, I’ll say, because in a show you get stuff like,
Jon you know, hey hey hey, what’s happening? You know, you get these catchphrases and lines like that you would start to have in school. But I’m thinking of more of the repetition of when there was a really good episode. You know how you have…
Jon You know, you have a rumor that nobody else knows about, you’re not gonna believe what I know, right? And so if there was an episode of the greatest American hero, like, did you see the one where he did such and such, or he was able to do whatever, and they’re like, no, I didn’t. Well, I do, I saw it.
Jon I have information you don’t have. And then then they would call bullshit on me. Like, no, he didn’t, he he can’t he can’t read minds or whatever, like just you wait. And so it was almost like this, this setup and payoff that would happen for me because I knew a rep repeat was coming.
Jon And I look at the TV guy, when’s it the one? I don’t know what, look, we don’t episode names. i don’t know what it was called. It’s not the the one where whatever, but I try to read the description.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Oh, I think it’s coming up this week. And I could tell that, John Fender that lives up the street. they didn’t believe me. Like, okay, the one I told you about is going to be on this Friday night. It’s the repeat of this one.
Jon And it created this culture that you couldn’t have today. If you have access to streaming, you’d be like, well, fast forward, load it up, fast forward to that part. And you could, you could prove it, but it gave you.
George It’s just, it’s so funny to me that John’s reason for reruns being important are to showing up his friends and proving them wrong.
Jon Yeah. Yeah.
George That says so much about the man I’ve known for over 30 years.
Jon yeah
George Ha ha ha ha
Jon That’s one interpretation. I’m just saying how you had fun with the information until it could be proven or disproven.
George oh
Mo ah wait You had to wait 26 weeks or whatever number of weeks because until the show came back so you could say, see, I told you so, basically.
Jon Yeah, because you could create this and you could lie. You could say that it has something happened because did you miss it? I didn’t see it. Oh, such and such died. What? you could You could play with it. But it’s an experience that you just can’t replicate. You couldn’t before because they they weren’t recorded. You weren’t going to see them again.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon And in in the ages of streaming, even if you don’t have access to streaming, You could go to the library and go online and look on Wikipedia and get a list of all the episodes and find out if something exists, even you can’t watch it.
Jon So now there’s a way to verify the veracity of my claims. And before JetX, there was no way to even go back and check. And the the fact that you had that repetition that was reliable and it was coming on a schedule, it was fun to me.
Jon for that Maybe not to all Gen but it was fun to me because of how you could predict when it was going to come back around and get a second bite of the apple. Like, I love this episode. Even if you’re not trying to prove somebody right or wrong.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon Thank you, George. But if you’re not trying to do that, it was your favorite episode. It built anticipation for, i already know I love this one. Oh, the one where the Duke boys are going to, you know,
Jon jump the tractor or whatever. I’m like, I can’t wait to see that one again because we couldn’t record it. So I know later in the year when the repeats come around, I can watch and re-enjoy that one in a way that binging, you know, streaming, you can’t do anymore today. So it made you appreciate things a little more because they were so metered.
Jon ah However you use the information, it was more metered. And I thought that was cool.
Mo You know, it’s funny, just’s just general questions. Like, we watch shows that were from way before our generation, right?
Jon Oh, yeah.
Mo Annie Griffith Show, you know, Honeymooners, you know, all these things.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo don’t think my kids ever watched, like, sitcoms that I grew up with that much.
Jon They don’t have to.
Mo Yeah, I guess not.
Jon Yeah. They can watch whatever they want on demand, it seems.
Mo Yeah.
Jon So, yeah.
Mo Yeah.
George as long as the algorithm allows it.
Jon That’s right. That’s right. The discoverability. That’s another thing that’s, you everything is catered to you these days. and we were I was talking with a friend the other day about how music is like that. It’s like, well, you don’t discover music because you don’t watch MTV and so being fed whatever everybody else is watching.
Jon What you listen to, it’s catered to what you like. Whatever you thumbs up, it gives you lots more of that and not something else. So it’s harder to discover things. So it was, that again, that limited access that I like so much.
Mo Oh, man.
Jon Whew.
Mo Okay.
Jon spirited discussion and a little bit of shade through them. That’s okay. That’s all right. Awesome. All
Mo Oh, man. When we come back, we’ll talk about the decline and how reruns have really changed from when we were kids to today. Keep it simple.
Jon In this final segment of the show, we’re going to talk about the decline, the debatable, we’re going to talk about the decline of the rerun, or maybe it’s it’s ah significance.
Mo instance
Jon But before we get right into that, want kind of have a quick round, Robin, and talk about, do you have a particular rerun experience, something related to when reruns come around or how you experience them or maybe why they’re important to you?
Jon And I see Mo nodding, so going to start with him. and What’s your ah memorable rerun experience?
Mo Well, I think this is a shared experience from anybody who watched TV during that time. they Show you’re looking forward to, right? You got the TV.
Jon Okay. Mm-hmm.
Mo It’s on the air. You’re watching it. All a sudden, this is a special report from the
Jon Oh.
Mo network.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon ah
George Yep.
Mo And yeah.
Jon The State of the Union Address. No!
Mo Oh my God. The state of union addresses. Oh my God.
George He’s on every channel!
Mo He’s on every freaking channel.
Jon ah
Mo And for those you who understand this is so bad is that in the background, the show was still running.
Jon Can’t escape.
Mo They did not pause the show.
Jon you’re You’re missing it. They didn’t pause. No.
Mo And if the guy talked for 15 minutes, they started showing it from 15 minutes in.
Jon Yep. Yep. You’re right.
Mo And if it wasn’t for the rerun, you would never know what happens. But, oh, my God. i i mean, there would be little screams sometimes in my house. You know, with you know especially if it but if it was my dad.
Mo He’d be like, are you kidding me? know, I mean, if it was a show he really wanted to watch because he didn’t watch that much.
Jon ah How could you, Masterpiece Theater?
Mo But, yeah, I know. Exactly.
George he
Mo You know, upstairs, downstairs. the But, yeah. But that’s what I think all of us had. But, oh, my God, that was so aggravating.
Jon Yeah. What about you, George? Do have a particular rerun memory related to this?
George Um, yeah, I mean, there was a lot of shows that i really enjoyed. And fortunately, um, when my father wasn’t around during the evenings, my mother would let me watch pretty much anything I wanted because, you know, she didn’t care that much about TV.
Mo Thank
George So I got most of the control over the television, uh, probably in my middle, uh, like teenage years, like 10 to 14 or 15 or so.
George Um,
Jon Cool.
George and I remember specifically, I had gone outside to play with the neighborhood kids, football, baseball, something outside, throwing rocks at each other, who knows. But we went outside to play, and we lost track of time.
Jon Uh-oh. Uh-oh.
George And I missed that week’s Battlestar Galactica.
Jon Damn
George And it was the second part of a two-parter.
Mo Oh my God.
Jon ha jim it
Mo Oh my God.
George Because they did like six of those in that first season.
Mo Oh, my heart. My heart hurts for you, man.
George there were There was part one and two of the Ice Planet and part one and two of this and blah, blah, blah.
Mo Yeah.
George So I had to go to school the next day when my other friends who did like Battlestar Galactica were talking about, oh, can you believe they did this and did this?
Mo Oh.
George And so everything was spoiled for me.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George But when I got to watch the rerun later on in that summer, I think it was that same summer. I don’t think it was a year later or anything, but that same summer when I got to watch the rerun or it might not have been a summer.
George Anyway, when I got to watch a rerun, I remember specifically being so angry every time something happened on the screen that I remembered those assholes talking about that day in class because everything was spoiled.
Mo yeah It was not a surprise anymore.
Jon ah
George And this was before spoilers was a term. And I felt so mad at myself that I can remember almost swearing to myself. I think it was like 10 when that show came out, maybe nine, something like that. I can almost remember swearing to myself, I’m never playing outside again.
George Just because I was so mad that I missed that one show.
Mo ah dare I get exercise in fresh air. Mm-hmm.
George But yeah, it was it was something that made me appreciate reruns and at the same time hate my choices.
Jon Oh, damn it.
Jon e
Jon Damn it.
George What about you, John?
Jon Yeah. Yeah. You know mine is, is, is tangentially similar to yours, but in a different way. It wasn’t so much. Well, here’s the thing. I’m a bionic dork. Six million dollar man, bionic woman. I can tell you the name of the dog and how he got his name.
Jon Anybody? No? Maximilian.
Mo Right.
Jon Cost a million dollars. Name him Max. Anyway.
Jon loved, loved, loved. I wasn’t as religiously committed to the bionic woman. I just, she came along later.
George Yeah.
Jon i loved it. I watched it, but not every single time. Or maybe it was because if I missed it, I wasn’t as upset. Maybe my dad watched something else on that night. I don’t know. But here’s, it they let me watch Six Million Dollar Man because they knew how much I loved it.
Jon They knew because they had to buy the action figures. They’re aware of my obsession. So what I was not aware of is that I watched an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man and I felt very lost.
Jon I didn’t understand. I mean, they’ll say, you know, last time on, you know, the story, was a continuation.
Mo Yeah.
Jon I’m like, well, this says it’s part two and it’s what, ah there’s a storyline called Kill Oscar where like there’s hypnosis or something involved to try to trigger people and to hear a key word to kill Oscar Goldman, the boss of OSI.
Mo okay
Jon And I’m like, well, how did this get set up? ah but How did I miss this? What’s going on? And then I’m like, well, now and now I feel lost and I watched the whole episode. And the next week I watched it and they didn’t talk about it again.
Jon What I didn’t know is that this was a crossover.
George Mmm.
Jon Part one was on the Bionic Woman.
George Oh.
Jon Part two was on the Six Million Dollar Man.
Mo You’re
Jon And then the conclusion was back on the Bionic Woman. And I guess they said that, but I wasn’t paying attention. The conclusion next week of the Bionic Woman, they just said that was it was over.
Mo right.
Jon It was time for the next show and I wasn’t paying attention. And so I watched the middle of this Kill Oscar storyline. And it wasn’t until later in the year that I was able to find the beginning of the story and the end of the story, because otherwise God knows when I would have seen it, but they broke it up into pieces like that.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon So that that was the one that didn’t make me mad the rerun. It made me glad the rerun was there, but it probably was more mad that I didn’t get to watch it the first time around, but it was weird watching the second time.
Mo Well, it didn’t make lot of sense to you, right?
Jon Cause you know, what’s coming and you know how it’s going to end. You just didn’t get to, to check that. And to that point, you know, we mentioned before we started the episode, we’ve alluded this a couple of times.
Jon We keep talking about back when they had reruns back when they had reruns and George, George made a really solid point that like, they’re not actually gone.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon Just depending upon your access to certain technology, they become less relevant. Right.
George Yeah. So when, when we first ah were picking this topic, I don’t know why my brain went this direction, but I immediately started thinking that even the topic itself was almost dismissive of a large population on planet earth who might watch television because not everybody has access to streaming or a recording system or even a VCR.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George I mean, you know, as they’re still dying around the world and whatnot, they’re, VCRs are, you know, getting a smaller and smaller. Anyway, there are a lot of people, even in this country, in the United States, that…
George have to watch television the way we had to watch it when we were kids. You either watch it on one of the three networks when it’s airing the first time, or your ass is waiting until it hits a rerun.
Mo Or.
George And they still do reruns on network television. All four of the networks have reruns for their main shows.
Jon Yep.
George I know that some of my shows air in these really weird ways that they didn’t back in the day. Like, for instance, I Love the Rookie. And the rookie has hopped around its airing schedule.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George And I don’t mean the day and time, but I mean the order of the year. Sometimes it started in the fall, had a mid-season break, and then finished off in the spring.
Jon Hmm.
George Sometimes that bitch only ran during the winter. And then sometimes it started in the spring like this year.
Jon Hmm.
Mo Yeah.
George If you’re in… an area where you don’t have access to good internet. And I know some people will start links everywhere. Yeah, but some people can’t afford that shit and it’s not that great to begin with.
Jon yeah
George If you don’t have a good sell signal, if you don’t have ah the money to afford those things, You’re at the mercy of what is still mandated in this country of over-the-air waves television.
George That’s still a thing that has to be done.
Jon sure yeah it’s terrestrial television because
George And that’s why I was like, yeah, that’s why I was like to say that the reruns are no longer here, the rise and fall of the rerun, is disingenuous because, yeah, I’m not going to say they didn’t rise and they didn’t slump off, but they’re not gone.
Mo Thank you.
Jon True. Right. Yeah. They’re no longer the imperative for everyone is not there. But you’re right. Terrestrial television, if that’s what you watch, you still have the same conundrum that if you don’t have access to streaming or an account with streaming or any kind of Internet, you have the exact same problem.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon And it’s more confusing now because it used to be. Oh, the fall season kicked off. Let’s watch all the new shows.
Mo Yeah.
Jon They’re whatever the hell they want. And sometimes they’re 10 episodes long and sometimes they’re 20 and sometimes they’re you never know.
Mo One thing, though, I think has changed today, though, I think across the board is digital TV, HDTV, because that’s now because they only do analog anymore. Right. That’s gone at this point. Is that correct? I don’t think they do.
Jon Yes, i I think it is supposed to be digital now.
George So the the over-the-air signal is digital, but it can be received on an analog system with converters.
Jon Yeah, yeah.
Mo Right.
Mo Right. We’re converters.
George So you can still use an antenna to pick it up.
Jon Sure.
Mo He’s special bucks.
Jon Yep.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yeah, right. Yeah.
Mo um But because that digital, I i was dear day to day, was on my TV.
Jon Yep.
Mo I just had my HD antenna, and I was just going through channel digital channels.
Jon Yep.
Mo And there are a large number of, I guess, the equivalent of old rerun station you know channels out there now, which which we which is also a little bit different.
George Right.
Jon Mm-hmm. Yep.
Mo But I totally agree, Jose. There’s still people, though, that even that may be their only way of watching a show again, right? That may be the only way they have it.
George Yeah.
Jon Yeah, it’s like Nick at Night has become a cottage industry. There’s like, you know, specifically the, you know, I i don’t know.
Mo Yeah. Game show night.
Jon Right, game show, the game show is a whole channel for just old reruns of game shows and stuff like that.
George yeah
Jon And did they even rerun game shows before? Like, there was no need for rerunning game shows, but now they do because they had them recorded.
Mo Did never. No. It’s yesterday’s news, really.
Jon Yep.
Mo know, so.
Jon And you have the ability now, of course, assuming we’re going to assume a lot of the decline of this. And you said not gone, but slumped off a lot because a lot of the people now have access to technologies like were so important to you that eliminate the need for things.
George Right.
Jon You started to get TiVo. God, I was a TiVo super fan. I love my TiVo. That was the first time shifting I ever saw. My wife was like, the X-Files was the show we couldn’t miss. And I remember Sunday nights, the first time I said, we don’t have to be home on time.
Jon TiVo is going to catch the X-Files. And she said, it by God better. Or that would have been the end of TiVo if it didn’t catch the X-Files.
Mo Yeah. Yeah.
Mo And you
Jon But we got home 30 minutes late, started in the beginning. You’re like, oh my God, damn this works. Holy crap. And you now you could start to explore other ways to do that.
Mo yeah and and also it’s a lot easier than what we had to, when we had VHS tapes, because you had to program your VCR, you had to have a tape in the machine, you had to, you know,
Jon Right.
George Sure.
Jon Right. Everybody’s recording everything for you. Just watch it.
Mo Yeah. um One of the things that also like it’s so like on like we like Abbott Elementary as a show we watch often, you know, but once it airs, if you miss the episode, catch it on the peacup Peacock channel, you know, like immediately it’s there.
Jon Yeah.
George Yeah.
George Yeah.
Jon Oh, yeah.
George On plus.
Jon Yep.
George Right.
Mo I’m plus and it’s there 24 seven.
George Yeah.
Jon Yep.
Mo Anytime you want to watch it again, it’s always there for you.
George You know, it’s it’s interesting because I know we’ve gone back and forth between the definitions of reruns and syndications throughout this podcast. And I know we could go on for another two or three hours probably talking about this topic and debating things.
George Because of the technology and those who have access to it, it’s almost as though people can become their own syndication and networks now.
Jon Oh, sure.
Mo In sense, yeah.
Jon You are, basically.
George right You can pick and choose the things that are on your Plex server that you know the three of us all have and run.
Mo Yeah, yeah.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George You can pick and choose when you want to watch them or how you want to watch them.
Jon Yeah.
George Commercials are automatically edited out, as John was talking about with his X-Files experience.
Mo Yeah. Thank God.
George You know, you could fast forward. Now there’s no commercial in anything on my Plex server because it the service just gets rid of it.
Mo ya You don’t even have to fast forward anymore………………….
Jon Yep, that little noise.
George Yeah. I wonder… if that luxury for the people who have it is why it feels like reruns are dead.
Jon I’m sure. oh yeah. Yeah. There’s the concept. If you have access to those things, as you said, the concept of a rerun is irrelevant because you’re not watching the first run.
George Yeah.
George Right.
Jon You don’t care. you know, I couldn’t tell you what night St. Dennis Medical comes on. Love that show. have no idea. Whenever it pops up is when I watch it.
George Tuesday.
Jon In reality, I don’t watch it. For me, the rerun is whenever the hell I feel like it, and that’s my first run.
George Yeah.
Jon I’m not even there for the initial one. Sometimes I’ll watch it two days later. We made a point many times on the show saying, oh, this show is so good, I watch it the day it drops. Like that’s some revelation.
Mo this
George That’s the, that’s the, yeah, that’s the exception now for us.
Mo Yeah. yeah
Jon That used to be all you could do. Right.
Mo Well, it well used to be the day and hour.
Jon That’s the exception.
Mo like Now it’s like, at the day…
Jon Right. The day and hour and minute. Right. Everybody was experiencing the same time.
Mo I
Jon Now that’s rare. We call it out if we’re watching it at the real time.
George Yeah.
Mo i mean that’s the kind of thing I was talking about before a little bit about how like people are like, oh, don’t tell me anything about it. you know haven’t watched it yet.
Jon ah
Mo you Which, it will again, it’s like you have to…
Jon like It’s already aired. Shut up. We’re going to about it.
Mo Yeah, so it’s there, but again, it’s not that shared experience again where you know that if people watch Quantum Leap when it was on the first time, you know everyone who watched it watched that episode together at the same time.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo you know
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo God forbid somebody tried to
George As a collective national consciousness…
Jon Yep.
Mo Right.
Jon And if you didn’t, you didn’t.
Mo There you go. That’s a good word for it.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Thank you. You know.
George yeah
Jon Yep. well And plus there was the benefit of first run television leading into the rerun. Or sometimes you’d have a rerun and you’d have these mid-season replacements. Like, oh, well, instead of reruns, we’re going to run start these new shows.
Jon Networks were able to structure an evening to prop up or give a boost to a show. We’re going to run this right after Cosby to give it a real chance to do well.
Mo Oh, Thursday nights.
George right
Mo Yeah, that magic Thursday night.
Jon Yeah. yeah ah Or we’re going to move it off of that night because we don’t like it as much. We’re killing it. You could almost tell the network’s attitude by what made it to reruns or not.
Mo Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jon If there was a mid-season replacement that came in you’re like, wait a minute, we’re not seeing any more of this? Oh, I guess they killed it. That before you could read Entertainment Weekly and find out what they killed.
Mo yeah
Jon You’re like, how come there’s no reruns? Oh, they’ve already moved on from this.
Mo yeah
George And diversity has done one thing. Mo talked about it earlier in one of the segments about the hundred episode rule needed for syndication.
Mo yeah
George You look at a show like Firefly, which gets regular airings now on things like Sci-Fi Channel and whatnot.
Jon Sure. Yeah.
Mo Amazing show.
George It’s got 13 episodes, ladies gentlemen.
Mo I know.
George It didn’t make it even close to 100, but because it was so beloved, it’s out there because people know if you put that on the air and somebody happens to be scrolling through
Jon I know. yep Don’t care anymore. Yep.
Mo to stop.
George They’re going to stop and watch it.
Mo Yeah.
George And I love that we live in an era now where we can exert that influence on people who really don’t give a shit about what we like, only care about what we’ll watch.
Mo Yeah.
George They don’t care for like, oh, I know that this is a great storyline and great character. They don’t give a shit.
Mo No.
George As long as it keeps you glued long enough that you might accidentally watch an ad that they can sell,
Mo I’m stopping.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George That’s all they care about. And probably all they’ve ever cared about. But at least now we can say, by God, Firefly was fucking awesome. And I’m not going to watch the 20 million episodes of this other shit thing.
George If I see Firefly, you’ll know that I’m watching it.
Jon going re-watch that one.
Mo stopping
Jon Yeah. And that 100-episode rule is, you said it’s out the window. These days, that would take 10 seasons of a lot of shows that have just 8 and 10 episodes apiece.
George Mm-hmm.
Mo Yeah, yeah.
Jon That old 100-episode rule just took four years to get there.
Mo Yeah, that’s true.
Jon Now you you’d be grinding for a decade to hit that number. No, they’re a little niche shows. They’re a little, you know somebody talked about a friend of mine and I were talking about how Netflix loves to cancel shows, even good ones, whereas Apple TV will give something breathing room.
George Yeah.
Jon And I said, well, that’s because if you signed up to Netflix to watch a show, You’re there to watch it. And if it goes away, you’re probably not going to unsubscribe from Netflix right away.
Jon They would rather have a new show that they could push to get new subscribers because that’s how they get their money.
Mo Yeah.
Jon They’re not in the business of making good TV last. They’re in the business of getting subscribers. It’s a totally different mindset in the streaming world.
George yeah
Jon So we don’t you don’t you don’t get the cultural impact of first run and reruns like we did.
George Unless it’s COVID and you have Tiger King.
Jon i know that We’re all watching Tiger King.
Mo Yeah, we all watched that.
Jon That’s, that’s, well, that’s, was that a happy coincidence or was that an unfortunate coincidence that we all watched Tiger King?
George I
George guess it depends on whether you’re the tiger or the watcher.
Jon I’m not sure. Your perspective.
Mo The
Jon What happened to her husband? We may never know.
George Hmm.
Jon All right.
George We know.
Jon who we We really know.
George Yes,
Jon All right. I think we have we’ve run this into the ground. I think reruns are still the around, but boy, are they less relevant. They’ve had a huge rise. We know why they existed and how they impacted us.
Jon And you know for a lot of us, it has it has changed dramatically the way we interact with the media that we so much enjoy. I want to thank Mo for doing all this research and digging into the background of reruns.
George yes sir.
Jon Yeah. Yeah. That appreciate you. Mo digging in on that stuff. It’s, it always is a grind sometimes to find all that stuff when one person spearheads it really appreciate it. So thank you.
Mo No worries. Yeah, yes.
Jon That is going to wrap it up for this edition of the gen X grownup podcast before we leave. Did I do that?
George You didn’t do the supporter yet.
Mo yes
Jon I do the supporter first. Uh, That’s going wrap it up for this backtrack edition of the show. but Before we leave you, I do want to thank another new Patreon supporter that joined us. i want to thank Josh, who signed up just a couple weeks ago during the holiday season.
Jon And I don’t always call out dollar numbers, but some people are just generous. Josh jumped into that $25 pledge level.
Mo Oh, wow. That’s awesome.
George Hmm.
Mo that’s awesome
Jon And look, it’s not that we appreciate 25 more than one. It’s just that 25 is 25 ones. it’s Josh is helping us get a lot more leeway there.
George but
Jon And you are contributing so much. We want to call you out and make sure you know how much we do appreciate your generosity in helping us. the Josh is literally paying the the monthly fee effectively for this ad, this recording platform that we’re on right now to record the podcast that costs us like 25 bucks a month.
Jon Uh, it goes a long way, Josh. We appreciate that you headed over to patreon.com slash gen X grownup, opened up your heart and your wallet. And said, I want to support what you guys do here at Gen X Group.
Jon I want to support Bo and John, George, to a lesser extent, possibly. want to make sure that everybody gets ah get some love.
George ah
Mo she
Jon Thank you, Josh. We’re so grateful for you and everyone that continues to support us on Patreon. That’s going wrap it up for this edition of the show. Don’t worry if you were worried. Please do not worry. We’ll be back in two weeks with our backtrack. And next week is a regular edition of our show. Until then, I’m John.
Jon George, thank you so much for being here, man.
George Yes, sir.
Jon Mo, you know i appreciate you, sir.
Mo Always fun.
Jon Fourth listener, you probably already know. We appreciate you most of all, though. We can’t wait to talk to you again next time. Bye-bye.
George See guys.
Mo Take care, everybody.
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About The Author

Mo As someone who barely manages to squeeze in as a GenXer my memories include more of the 70's than those younger GenXers. Reading and movies are my passions with some video gaming thrown in there for good measure!

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