Earlier this month The Express wrote about "the frustration felt by many licence fee payers at the record number of repeats showing on television".
The Express went on to tell us:
"Christmas viewers will be deluged with almost 100 hours of repeats. A Sunday Express study of the 2012 schedules found that a staggering level of old series and re-run films will be broadcast by the three main channels over Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day..."
There is no doubt a good reason why The Express chose to focus on "the three main channels" and it may have something to do with the repeat-heavy festive schedule of Channel 5, which is also owned by Express proprietor Richard Desmond.
For example, between 8am on Christmas Day and 1am on Boxing Day, Channel 5 has less than 90 minutes of first-time programming.
From 8am Channel 5 has more than five hours given over to the latest dusting off of Gone With The Wind, followed by over four hours of Ben Hur, taking us neatly up to 5.25pm when they have the premiere of a TV movie called The Santa Incident.
The evening is then given over to repeats of programmes about haulage company Eddie Stobart.
No, really.
In fact, Eddie Stobart's Christmas Cracker is not only a repeat but it is due to be repeated three times on Channel 5 over the Christmas week alone, including consectuve days on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
Eddie Stobart's Trucks, Trailers and Tinsel is also a repeat, being shown again on Thursday, as is Eddie Stobart's Christmas Delivery.
All of these repeats are then topped off with a three-hour repeat of clips show Greatest Christmas TV Moments which in effect is a repeat of much-repeated moments from popularly-repeated TV repeats.
Channel 5 doesn't claim to be the best broadcaster in the world though, does it? The BBC, however does, and its performance over Christmas was no better.
Posted by: Lee | Dec 29, 2012 at 12:16