Back Door Pilots Of Shows

[anotherguyTN]

They wouldn't have to go thru all the tapes or whatever to weed out those Xmas shows during ordinary time. It's very simple: When they come across a holiday episode in June, set it aside. What's so hard? It can't cost anything.

Yes, it would cost something. Stations need to run the shows as the syndicators provide them. They can't just set them aside.
TV stations have very little control over the order of the episodes shown. Now days a lot of shows are sent down satellite the day the episode is to be shown. No more film or video tape.

Sometimes in those cases the holiday epsiodes are run during the actual holiday season, but there's still no guarantee that they won't run other times. I actually don't mind holiday episodes being run at other times of the year, but I think it's funny when one comes on in the hottest part of the Summer or in January or February, just after the holiday season is over.

One thing I don't understand is why on some syndicated reruns the episodes are in no particular order, but then what is even worse is when cable achannels like TV Land show only a limited number of the same episodes over and over again and never show others.

 

[stdjsb25]

If you look at one more example...."Return Engagements", from Dallas' 3rd Season...even though it was basically a Dallas episode, it did serve as a kind of backdoor pilot for "Knots Landing"...airing one week before that show debuted.

 

[jwk1979]

Sometimes in those cases the holiday epsiodes are run during the actual holiday season, but there's still no guarantee that they won't run other times. I actually don't mind holiday episodes being run at other times of the year, but I think it's funny when one comes on in the hottest part of the Summer or in January or February, just after the holiday season is over.

My wife was watching the Hallmark Channel over the weekend and they were showing a preview for "Christmas in Canaan", starring Billy Ray Cyrus, to be shown over the Forth of July Weekend. Since the Hallmark Channel owns the rights to the movie and since it was made exclusively for the Hallmark Channel, why show it over the July 4th Weekend. That would be like showing "The Patriot" on Christmas Day.

 

[anotherguyTN]

Cartoon Network and/or Boomerang have had Christmas in July weekends, although I don't know if that's still happening. My daughter's more into the Disney Channel and Nick and we don't get Boomerang.

I brought this up earlier in another thread but I thought it was weird that CMT was showing National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation in January and February when they never showed it during the Christmas season.

 

[tantric38]

Do you know what's almost as bad as backdoor pilots or Christmas episodes in July? Clip shows, that's what. They shouldn't be counted among the reruns any more than the BPs. (Does anything good have the initials BP?) I hate those things. It's just laziness. And Family Ties may have been the worst offender. It's funny how during a clip show the characters recall all of those past incidents exactly as they happened word-for-word. And they'd use any lame excuse to launch into one like trotting out a "cousin" we never knew existed before and was never heard from again, or Lauren doing a paper on the "American family" or whatever. Did Alex ever bonk her? Because I would've wrecked that chick. And how come we never saw the outside of that house? ???