[Richard R1]

I have a Hughes HDVR2 that is not picking up the next episode of PBS's History Detectives, on Monday 09-03-2007. When I first noticed the absence, I thought it was due to Labor Day programming, but later I had a chance to notice there was a new episode listed for that day. A few days later, the 09-10-2007 episode was picked up by my SP, but still not the one on Labor Day.

I created a Wishlist for the title, and it properly finds each episode, but not the SP, so I manually set it to record.

 

[bicker]

Strange -- my TiVo picked it up just fine.

 

[taronga]

This week's episode is only two-thirds new (the McKinley casket flag story is a repeat) which might confuse some schedulers.

 

[bicker]

Last week was also only 2/3 new. I have to say, I really don't like that tactic. If they want to put out a 40 min program, then I'd prefer that they'd do that.

 

[Richard R1]

Yes, I had noticed their recycling of previous material. On last week's episode about the USS Indianapolis, at least they admitted up front that it was an "encore presentation". Then, when I saw the previews for next week, it was clear the McKinley piece looked familiar.

I'm concerned that this may indicate a funding problem, and could be a precursor to ending the series. That would be a huge loss, in my opinion. Maybe they are just having trouble finding new worthy topics to cover.

By the way. the OAD for the 9-3-07 episode is 9-3-07, so I wouldn't think that would confuse any SP.

 

[mattack]

They've been doing the one old segment for a few years at least... Though at least in one episode recently (I haven't seen them all), they made it much more clear that it was a repeat segment.

 

[bicker]

I think this may be the first time, though, that they're doing two episodes back-to-back with only 2 original stories in them. They had been a bit better about spreading out the embedded partial reruns.

 

[mattack]

BTW Mad TV also does this routinely... (Though admittedly I still have most of the last season of MadTV tivoed) I guess even SNL reruns their fake commercials.

If these 'partial reruns' ended up making more 'new' episodes, I'd be ok with it.. i.e. 20 episodes with 75% new content vs 15 episodes with full new content... at least if the new/old content is easily delineated and I don't have to remember which is new or not.
(That is, I realize that would end up with the same total quantity of new material.. but I think what they REALLY do is make 15 episodes with some partial rerun segments.. kind of like making the bag of chips 13 oz rather than 13.5 oz and charging the same amount.. ARGH.)