Things I Hate About TV: quick late-night reruns

The reason leno and letterman dont show that old re-runs is because they are tapped not filmed. meaning that tape looses quality over time, so when u rerun an old episode (say years old) the quality will look real bad. Also, if u want to catch an old epsiode of leno from the wee past tune in after carson daly's late night show and nbc will rerun the weeks past leno show...

When Trio was around, they had ancient episodes of Letterman. I'm talking about his time on NBC. They were brilliant- much better than anything Leno's ever pulled out of his ass. It was easy to see why Letterman was Carson's heir apparent.

I don't think the "guest host" idea can use to completely eliminate repeats, because it's not just the host that deserves time off - the producers, director, band members, writers, camera and sound people, etc. all deserve a week off here and there.

However, I agree with the point that it'd be nice to see old episodes. Especially with talk shows, where because of the quantity of episodes do not release complete DVD packs, it would be really neat to see older episodes. I faintly remember watching the first episodes of Conan and the week Jay took over at The Tonight Show, but a lot of the stuff a little after that is mostly in the past. Let's see a 5-year-old episode and see how things have changed. I'd likely tune into "special" repeat episodes more than I would for a new episode, actually, knowing it was a classic beforehand.

Dave and Jay have been on long enough that it might be cool to see them rerun famous episodes (or full weeks) from years ago. In fact, that's something they used to do with regularity during the mid-to-late '90s. I mean, wouldn't be cool to see Dave's first week on CBS? His infamous interview with Madonna? Jay's first interview with a poofy-haired and leather-clad Howard Stern? Heck, even Conan should get nostalgic: what about some reruns from the Andy Richter era, for Christ's sake?

At least when Carson wasn't around, he'd have a guest host. But he was the only one who seemed secure enough in his job to have guest hosts for any extended stretch. For Jay, it has to be a stunt (Kate Couric), and Dave won't have guest hosts unless he's got a life-threatening illness. But it would be cool to see some guest hosts on a more regular basis, at least to break up some of the routine.

First: If you're going to rerun an episode, it kind of HAS to be recent one. Older episodes have dated jokes. I don't want to see Letterman or Leno cracking wise about Monica Lewinski.

Second: Network TV should adopt the cable model of showing a new show and then rerunning it throughout the week. This way people who are DVR-less and, well, not as hardcore as the people who read this blog, could keep up with more complicated shows like Lost and Veronica Mars because they'd have more opportunity to see them. It would also cut down on the need to pad-out primetime a bunch of shows no one wants to watch.

Another highlight of rereunning old chat shows - seeing people saying "my new album/film/relationship" will be great, knowing full well it fails.

For whatever it's worth, Conan's reruns tend to be older. His usual Monday reruns are usually a month or two old, and when he does a full week of reruns, they're several months old. For example, tonight's an episode from January, and the rest of this week are episodes from last fall.

There's no excuse for ever having a rerun on television. I don't care if it's late night or primetime. Air one show, in it's entirity. After that run is over, say 12 weeks, air another show in the same time slot. All the major networks have ties to cable networks. Air any repeats over there and air them in the proper sequence.

I don't understand why they have to do reruns at all. What happened to the idea of the guest host, like Carson used to have?

leno, letterman, et al fear if they air an episode that is obviously old, you will be more inclined to turn the channel and maybe find a show on that you like better. They can't risk you never coming back because you want to watch something else.