ABSTRACT
Over the past two decades, repetition-and the specific role of offnetwork syndication-has expanded beyond the traditional broadcast spectrum, due to the restructuring of the television industry in the wake of continued deregulation and market expansion, and the interrelated development of technologies that have augmented the television experience. In the early years of the twenty-first century, TV is clearly ‘‘more’’ than it was 50, 30, or even 10 years ago; there are many more viewing options, thanks to the deployment of cable and direct broadcast satellite (DBS) distribution systems and program services; the widespread adoption of domestic video production and playback devices (i.e., videocassette recorders (VCRs), DVD players, and related equipment); and emerging broadband/Internet applications. While there are certainly new media and program forms (e.g., electronic programming guide (EPG) interfaces, reality television), all of these seeming innovations and expansions have benefited most from the medium’s continued reliance on the televisual past, whether in the form of off-net, off-cable, or off-firstrun reruns of fictional series, or in the recombinant uses of fictional and nonfictional audiovisual fragments, as in cable series like VH-1’s I Love The 80s, MSNBC’s Time and Again, or A&E’s Biography. As this study has shown, a media text’s cultural and industrial durability in repetition has been a primary design feature of many forms and entire genres since the industrialization of publishing in the nineteenth century. In television terms, a series’—or to use the vernacular of the media industry, a ‘‘property’s’’—propensity for repetition is an essential element in the overall viability of the studio, producer, distributor, network, station, and even fan.2 In short, American television-both as an industry and as a culture-needs repetition.
