I know Channel 4 is strapped for cash, but this is ridiculous.
On Sunday 24th May at 18:20 – a week ago – C4 showed Night at the Museum, the comedy film starring Ben Stiller. This was the film’s terrestrial premiere, and was timed for the weekend of the opening of the sequel Night at the Museum 2.
Then last night Channel 4 was advertising its line-up. And wouldn’t you know it? Night At The Museum was on again at 20:05.
So C4 has shown the same film twice, on the same day, within a week. OK – so it was advertised as a “2nd Chance Sunday” but that’s really got to take the biscuit.
Repeats on E4 or More 4 make sense. Film 4 is on a pemament loop, but we expect film channels to be just that. ITV2 or BBC Three repeat films within the same week. But they’re “digital” channels. We’ve come to expect it.
The odd drama gets a repeat either in late night or through omnibuses of the soaps at weekends. But I simply can’t remember a time when a major “terrestrial” channel did something like this with a film.
Quite what such a broad film was doing on Channel 4 is a separate question.
Still – they’re in dire straits and they desperate for this year’s Big Brother to be a success. Yes – it’s that time of the year again. The time of the year that I have to avoid the channel because I can’t stand it. And nor will I watch Coach Trip or Come Dine With Me – other series that fill up vast hours of the schedule.
The sad fact is that I watch so little of the channel during these periods, that if they do have something decent on, I won’t know about it unless I saw it in a listings guide, because I won’t have seen a trailer.
Moving on to a totally different subject…
Memo to Five: Every time you run a “special” episode of The Gadget Show, like tonight’s “The Gadget Show Summer Special”, you do realise that it drops out of my Sky+ series link because the box thinks it’s a different programme? It happened a few weeks ago with another special episode. You might want to think about keeping the Sky EPG programme name the same! You can have that one for free.
“Series link” is one of the most valuable things to have happened to broadcasters in the digital age. Making full use of it and ensuring your shows don’t drop off should be key to everyone’s strategy. Things like this, and Eurosport’s seeming refusal to adopt the technology, only damage your viewing figures.