The Repeats Report 2014: Thoughts from the Researcher

Last Of The Summer Wine. Image shows from L to R: Walter C. 'Foggy' Dewhurst (Brian Wilde), Howard Sibshaw (Robert Fyfe), William 'Compo' Simmonite (Bill Owen), Norman Clegg (Peter Sallis). Copyright: BBC

Once again, as our 2014 repeats list shows, Last Of The Summer Wine was the most re-run British TV comedy of the year - but there is a bit more to the repeats data than just one sitcom...

Of course, repeats themselves are not a problem. The continued popularity of the channel Gold, 22 years since its launch, illustrates the British public's appetite for re-watching comedy classics. If there is an issue with repeats, it must surely be the lack of diversity in the number of shows broadcast; and that some programmes perhaps do not deserve to be repeated as often as they are (for example, I would question Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet of Crisps getting more broadcast slots than QI).

BCG began to conduct research into British comedy scheduling last year, and this time around we have expanded the research further. Additional channels have been added, not least following the launch of London Live, which repeats comedies including Coupling and Green Wing; The Africa Channel, which is repeating Desmond's on a very regular basis; and 4Music, whose repeats of 8 Out Of 10 Cats pushed the panel show into second place in the list.

However, with limited resources we still only cover 60 TV channels. They are the most prominent in the country, but other more obscure stations do still exist further down the EPG.

8 Out Of 10 Cats. Image shows from L to R: Sean Lock, Jimmy Carr, Jon Richardson. Copyright: Zeppotron

The sheer number of 8 Out Of 10 Cats repeats scheduled was a big surprise to us this time. When it comes to prolific panel shows we tend to first think of programmes on Dave like QI or Mock The Week. However, whilst 8 Out Of 10 Cats received a fair number of repeats on Dave, it is on 4Music almost constantly.

Aside from the 1,041 repeats of the normal version of the show we logged, there were also 148 repeats of 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown. If you count the two formats together, Jimmy Carr & Co can be found somewhere on British television, on average, more than 3 times every single day!

Some more facts...

- If you do not count films, there were 579 different British comedies repeated on TV in 2014, compared to 514 different British comedies in 2013.

- Amongst the 39 comedies with 200+ repeats, five of them are children's comedies that have episodes that last 15 minutes or less (thus two episodes are often shown together). These could therefore be considered statistical anomalies. Mr Bean: The Animated Series, Sooty, Bottom Knocker Street, Shaun The Sheep and Timmy Time were the shorter programmes kids saw a lot of in 2014.

- Using the Britain's Best Sitcom poll from 2004 as a base, the list of notable comedies not repeated in 2014 include Drop The Dead Donkey (which London Live has now started showing), Till Death Do Us Part, Phoenix Nights, Hi-De-Hi! and It Ain't Half Hot Mum.

- Curiously, we did not find a single repeat for Monty Python's Flying Circus during 2014 either. Given the live reunion show and various other clip programmes and documentaries that were broadcast, it seems a shame that not even the BBC could repeat the original programme that launched the troupe.

- It's not just British comedy shows that are prolifically repeated. US sitcom Friends was repeated on Comedy Central and Comedy Central Extra 6,766 times; Family Guy was shown on 2,869 occasions; The Simpsons appeared 2,111 times; Top Gear was scheduled 2,039 times and Doctor Who went on 1,900 repeated adventures.

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