Recently, USA started replaying Modern Family.
This was great because it isn't on netflix, or really any other channel besides the one it airs on, so it was a chance to see a lot of episodes I'd never seen as I was never a religious viewer, but had always enjoyed what I had witnessed. I started to tune in every day at dinner and I realized very quickly that I'd see the same episodes almost daily. Then I realized this actually happens a LOT with shows that are still on the air but are now syndicated, like How I Met Your Mother. It hit me that the reason for this is a brilliant marketing ploy.
Think about it...you never really watch the show simply because you either work, or are just busy with life in general, or maybe you were interested but missed it when it started and now simply can't catch up because of the means of catching up (don't wanna buy the DVD or iTunes or whatever). A dozen simple and logical reasons you didn't watch it. So what do the networks do? They syndicate shows to other networks and the other networks promote it as saying, "Modern Family is now on USA!". You get all excited and want to watch it now, until you realize it actually is, "5 episodes of Modern Family are now on USA!" and so you get tired of those episodes quickly, and want to see new ones, but you still don't wanna pay for them. What do you do? You find out when new episodes air and you start to tune into those.
BAM. NEW VIEWERS.
BRILLIANT.
I mean, it really is absolutely brilliant. I think a lot of this is now happening thanks to Family Guy having been on Adult Swim. They gained a ton of viewership, people actually went and bought the DVDS and Fox brought the show back from cancelation! The show may be hurting for views or not-I don't really know, honestly-but it does bring in new viewers who hunger for episodes they don't have to pay for and aren't the same ones they've already been subjected to 80 thousand times. It's also a way to get around licensing your product to things like Netflix, which come with HUGE tags. Netflix will put your program on their service for a yearly fee but it also will expire and NBC will have to renew it (which may cost more, I don't know) and it keeps people who have Netflix from buying the DVDs or iTunes or Amazon episodes because why pay for something if you can have it for 7 dollars a month along with tons of other content. So they skirt around that danger zone by simply syndicating it and then gaining more viewers for new episodes via their syndication.
For once, it's a marketing ploy I don't have a problem with, because it's worked. I now generally tune into new episodes when they air. Well done.
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