The Great Christmas TV Repeats Scandal (or not)

Today sees the release of this year’s finalised Christmas and New Years TV and radio listings (which will be available in Digiguide this evening).  I was going to write a blog previewing some of the top picks to look out for during the festive period but before I do I felt compelled to write a mini rant discussing the incredibly contentious (or so it would seem) issue of Christmas schedules.

As you may have read this morning, 63% of this year’s programming between December 20^th and January 2^nd on BBC 1 and 2, ITV and Channel 4 will be repeats, a rise from last year’s figure of 47.5%, which means that of the 2,729 scheduled programmes during this period, 1,154 will have been broadcast before. Channel 4 have been named and shamed as having the most repeated programming with as much as 72% while ITV have the most new content with only 57% of their shows being repeats.

Some publications (I won’t name them but you can almost certainly guess who) have really run with The Great Christmas TV Repeats Scandal (that headline may have been a bit made up...) this year, using words within their pieces such as “outrage”, “fury” and yes, “scandal”, when writing about this (clearly) emotive subject.

But is it that big a deal, really? Christmas TV as long as I can remember has always been dominated by repeats (has it not become a standard question to ask when The Great Escape and Zulu are on?) with the odd festive special of a popular series or box office hit making it’s free to air premiere. That’s just Christmas TV is it not? Yes the figures above do seem overly high but let’s put it into perspective, that is across four channels, factor in the top 20 or so highest rated channels available digitally and you’ll find their repeat heavy schedules will raise that percentage figure significantly higher. So, really when you take a step back and ignore the vitriolic headlines, in reality a 37% chunk of brand new programming over a two week period across just four channels is actually pretty good. Plus, does anyone really have a problem watching repeats of Only Fools and Horses, The Vicar of Dibley and The Royle Family? If they did then certain channels would have gone out of business years ago...

It’s not something that I can get easily wound up about and find it odd that some publications do. There are plenty of new shows, returning favourites and movie premieres to look forward to as part of that 37%, some of which we will be previewing next week as we take a look at the top comedies, dramas, films and family choices in more depth.

Oh and The Great Escape is on December 20^th on 5USA and Zulu on December 27^th on Channel 4...