Yes that’s right, this isn’t a repeat. It’s an All New entry.
BBC3 is the latest channel to go down this ridiculous and mis-used path. During half-time in the football last night I was flicking around and stumbled over BBC3’s Celebrity Boat Race thing. Obviously an entirely pointless and uninteresting programme, but championed below the DOG as being ALL NEW.
I suspect that the real reason for doing this is that it pisses off those DOG-haters (myself included) who make a lot of noise about these needless logos.
But the usage in the UK is just wrong. What it really does in multi-channel television, is advertise the fact that you have barely any new programming. In which case, why flag up the fact? Is it because programmes like Vic & Bob’s new sitcom Catterick, are repeated so many times that you don’t know where to jump in? I don’t know.
The TV terminology, “All New” comes, as far as I know, from the US, where traditionally a TV season lasts from September until May. But they only make 22 or so episodes per season, and so don’t have enough material to run new programmes every week. So you get re-runs during the season. In the dead months like January, this may go on for two or more weeks, so you advertise the fact that you’re running a new episode by calling it “All New”. (OK the US TV market’s changing, and will probably see the end of traditional TV seasons as we now know them).
But the term “All New” is dreadful. Can a show be “Partly New”? I suppose there are “Revised Repeats” like episodes of Ground Force where they revisit the garden as an excuse to reshow the programme in full, and check that the garden hasn’t gone to ruin in the intervening time. As I understand it, these are largely to reduce the reported quantity of repeated programming being output. But could a programme be “Mostly New”? “All New” is such an Americanism. We don’t get advertisers talking about their “All New” products.
Pointless.