Adored by the Network

Can you guess what the Network's favorite show is?


I mean, it was clearly obvious that they weren't going to do anything useful, but it was either this, or watch Cartoon Network's latest excuse to show Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends too many times, and they obviously didn't want to see that, so they decided this was better.
—This fanfiction spoof of The Adventures of Super Mario Bros 3

So you're curling up on the armchair to watch your favorite show—but the schedule has been changed and yet another airing of the network's most popular (or just favored by execs) show is airing in its place. Your blood boils, but there's nothing you can do—it's the network's pet program.

This is Adored by the Network in a nutshell. An over-promoted, over-aired program that either dominates the entire schedule or gets promoted over every other show on the network or some combination of the two. Whenever networks stumble upon a massive hit show, this show usually gets the most attention and most promotion. Marathons are run, special programming events occur often surrounding the show, and the show is given multiple airings daily.

This usually comes at the expense all the other shows on the channel, particularly the shows on the verge of being canceled. At the very least, they will just be ignored. At the very worst, they can be canceled or re-tooled to make it more in line with the adored show. And at very, very, worst—it could signal the first signs of Network Decay, as the network may add more shows similar to the network darling to the lineup.

Despite the network's fixation on this show, it doesn't fit the nature of being the Creator's Pet because, well, if it's a hit, then many people like it. It may be a critical darling that's loved by all. You yourself may like the show. But you also like other shows on the channel and the overbearing presence of the program just may be too much. Naturally, if a single series is on all the time, it may lead to Hype Backlash through overexposure, since even the people who genuinely enjoy the show may get sick of it. Enough of this can ironically result into the show being considered Screwed by the Network, as it can lead to the show's downfall and cancellation.

Before you add an example, keep in mind this isn't Complaining About Shows You Don't Like. Also, the simple act of airing the show a lot of times doesn't alone qualify it for this trope. The network has to go above and beyond to prop this show up constantly.

See also Cash Cow Franchise, Hollywood Hype Machine (when this happens to actors), Creator's Pet (when this happens to characters and the fans are annoyed), Wolverine Publicity and Network Decay. Contrast Screwed by the Network; also sometimes the result of this trope.

Examples of Adored by the Network include:

Anime

  • Both Inuyasha and Naruto were the anime darlings of Cartoon Network/Toonami after premiering and becoming popular, only to be followed by Bleach before the network all but stopped showing anime. And before those shows, it was Dragon Ball Z and Mobile Suit Gundam Wing.
    • Speaking of Inuyasha, its still averaging at least one rerun a week on [Adult Swim]. Since its both a network stable and a network favorite, it's not going anywhere.
    • The network just announced on their schedule that for Christmas Eve and New Years Eve they're airing Bleach marathons. That's right..TWO marathons of the EXACT SAME SHOW for two weeks in a row!
    • In the late 90's through early 2000's, Cartoon Network loved Sailor Moon.
  • Digimon was this for the ailing Fox Kids around the time of Digimon Adventure; the love sort of petered off by the end of Digimon Adventure 02. It was picked up by the network in order to compete with Pokémon on Kids WB and capitalize on the Anime boom. Some Saturday mornings, Digimon would air three times. It supplanted Power Rangers (circa Power Rangers Lost Galaxy) as the most popular show on the block and even booted the show from its long-time schedule spots (9am EST Saturdays and 4pm EST weekdays). This still rankles long time Power Rangers fans, as it would retroactively prove to be a Foreshadowing for that series sinking even lower under Disney...
  • The CW4kids themed block "Toonzai" currently[when?] airs between two to three hours of Yu-Gi-Oh! content within its six hour time slot on Saturday mornings, plus Yu-Gi-Oh! advertisements for new cards and episodes intermittent between the other shows. They also air Dinosaur King, a series with a similar format to Yu-Gi-Oh!, and advertise Bakugan, which is a competitor complete with card game-centric anime itself. Any impressionable mind watching the current[when?] Saturday morning block on the CW is going to be convinced that people dramatically waving trading cards around is basically the coolest thing ever. Justified in that Yu-Gi-Oh has secured itself in the Guinness Book of World Records in 2009 as most successful trading card game worldwide, and that there was a theatrical film from 2004.
    • In addition, "Toonzai" commercials advertise shows for an afternoon slot. Starting at exactly noon, "Toonzai"'s out and CW is showing other things (the first of which is "Preachings of the Eucharist" or something similarly titled, which is literally watching a priest do Sunday Church things). Double Screwing.
  • Toonami was obviously head-over-heels for Dragonball Z which, up until it ended in 2003, (then up until the uncut version stopped airing in 2005) was shown as many times as possible. To be fair, it was highly acclaimed, very popular, and the biggest ratings grabber at the time. And then came a certain show about an orange-wearing ninja... (pictured above)
    • Dragon Ball Z Kai has now become this for Nicktoons Network, with anywhere from three to six hours worth being shown on any given day in total. This has gotten to such a point that Nicktoons began airing the original Dragonball Z movies in an almost completely uncut format, with the only real edit so far being a Hitler scene in Dragonball Z: Fusion Reborn getting excised. All blood, violence, and even profanity is kept, at a TV-Y7-FV rating no less.
  • Adult Swim ran Cowboy Bebop every night for something like six years, and since then they still show at least one episode every Saturday night. It's only twenty-six episodes long.
    • Adult Swim explicitly stated on multiple occasions that FLCL was their favorite anime, and they sure showed it for a while. The high amount of airings was especially notable given the fact that the series had only 6 episodes, which resulted in much replay of each episode.
    • While not as popular as other examples, the 2003 anime version of Fullmetal Alchemist was pretty popular with the block. Now they've switched over to Brotherhood.
  • Animax Latin America was criticized towards its anime-only run because of this. Between 2005 to 2007, shows such as Fullmetal Alchemist and GetBackers (and to a lesser extent, Hunter X Hunter and Pita-Ten, although the latter was removed from the schedule in 2007). To be fair though, both of the former two series did have 52 episodes. When The Twelve Kingdoms premiered, it pretty much cluttered most of the schedule in the past few years (It had 47 episodes).
  • Spanish network Antena 3 's sub-network Neo X might as well be called The Crayon Shin-chan Network, with around over 3 hours of it every day on morning, with weekends tacking in a Shinchan movie after all of that. There aren't that many movies, so after a month they just loop. And eventually they just ditched the movies and had five hours of Crayon Shin-chan on weekends. Sure, Spaniards love Shin-chan, but is that overkill really needed? Then again, Antena 3 itself has been showing two Simpsons episodes a day.... for well over a decade. The situation eventually calmed down; now they "only" show two hours.
  • For a time, Jetix would show 24 hour marathons of Pucca at the drop of a hat.
  • Pokémon for Kids WB. Sometimes they would show nothing but the show to promote a special or new movie, and they'd sometimes show it for three hours at a time. Cartoon Network, the show's current channel, doesn't do this nearly as often.
    • Kids WB's adoration for all things Pokemon even spilled into their promotional attempts for other shows in their lineup. During a Batman Beyond-themed Y 2 K event, viewers were encouraged to send in their predictions of the future to be read on the air. One of the more notable entries: "In the future, Pokemon will be on every channel all day long." The daydreams of someone truly obsessed with the series, or an early example of epic trolling?


Films -- Animation

  • 24-hour marathons of The Iron Giant on Cartoon Network on Thanksgiving Day. Justified, since viewership is way down (most everyone who's watching TV on Thanksgiving is watching football anyway) and they pretty much write off advertising for the day. So they air one thing repeatedly rather than waste time with shows that might bring in money on another day, and they can give most of their employees the day off as well.
  • Starz and Encore's kids channels seem to be quite fond of Toy Story 3.
  • ABC Family loves to air The Lion King! On May 5, 2012 they aired the movie 2 times in a row, one airing after another.


Films -- Live-Action

  • Remember that HBO once stood for "Hey! Beastmaster's On!". And it aired so often on TBS that it earned itself the nickname "The Beastmaster Station".
  • Back in the early to mid 90's, TBS also used to show Clash of the Titans what seemed like every Saturday and Sunday.
  • A Canadian example is Family Channel (our Disney Channel) The only movies they seem to ever play are Around the World in Eighty Days with Jackie Chan, or...no, that's about it.
  • ABC Family really likes using whatever excuse they can to air their Harry Potter marathons. Upcoming movies, Christmas, Memorial Day, whatever. Between the length of the films and frequent commercial breaks, "Harry Potter Weekends" now last up to five days long, and they're still only up to the sixth film.
    • Or they'll pull out some Disney and/or Pixar movies, or teen chick flicks.
    • And BOTH Charlie and The Chocolate Factory adaptations.
    • And most of ALL... monthly airings of Holes!! You could recite the movie line-for-line by seeing it so many times!
    • Not to mention Matilda. It feels like they show it every three weeks; must be a Roald Dahl fetish...
  • Peachtree TV (WPCH, formerly WTBS), appears to have a particular fetish for certain films which are played over and over and over on a regular basis, and this has been going on for years. Examples include The Hunt for Red October, A Few Good Men, and the Lethal Weapon movies.
  • Spike TV seems to have a Star Wars marathon, showing all six films, roughly every third weekend.
    • Spike TV was once practically the James Bond Network, a title previously held by TBS and TNT in tandem, followed by AMC for a little while.
    • Craig-era Bond seems to have been handed over to the USA Network after it decided to retire its longstanding status as The Mummy 1999 Network.
  • There also existed a channel that played the film Rudy for 24 hours straight in some areas.
  • TBS has an annual 24-hour marathon of A Christmas Story, Christmas Eve night to Christmas Day night. Granted, it's a beloved holiday classic. (It's also used to give most of their employees Christmas off. When that's all your showing, all you need is a bare bones staff to make sure the building doesn't burn down.)
  • Men in Black is adored by TBS.
    • So's Dumb and Dumber. It seems as if TBS can't go a month without showing it.
  • For years, Telemundo would often use any major holiday as an excuse to play back to back Cantinflas movies.
  • VH-1 is fond of showing Jacksons: An American Dream any time they have a gap in their schedule (with commercials, it fills five hours of airtime). Naturally, any time Michael was in legal trouble, this got worse (don't even think about how much it was shown after he passed away). A similar thing happened during the holidays with A Diva's Christmas Carol.
  • For some reason, Disney XD has an inordinate fondness for the Arthur and the Invisibles trilogy.
  • A station once aired 24 hours of Groundhog Day on Groundhog Day. This actually makes some sense, considering what the film's about.
  • Early Comedy Central had a deep and abiding love affair with Monty Python and the Holy Grail in the mid-90s, which only made the constant overquoting of it among geeks worse.
  • FOX constantly shows Independence Day whenever a big event is happening on another network: Super Bowl, Oscars, etc...
  • Every time a Star Wars prequel was released, Australia's Fox-affiliated Channel 10 showed the original trilogy over three weekends and promoted the crap out of it, often bookending commercial breaks with two promos for the same film. It's an older example, but it checks out.
  • IFC really loves the Hostel movies and The Shining.
  • AMC's favorite movie is Unforgiven.
  • Britain's ITV channels have a few favourites. ITV 2 is having a whirlwind romance with Catwoman, both sequels to The Mummy 1999, and Wild Wild West. ITV 4 is currently[when?] wearing out its master copies of the Rocky series.
  • TNT and USA are both very bad about going through phases where they'll show the same movie over and over and over again, whether it's The Dark Knight on TNT or National Treasure on USA - if either of them shows the movie once, you know you'll be seeing it again within the week.
  • Ted Turner adored The Shawshank Redemption. After its poor showing at the box office, he bought up the rights and aired it weekly, single-handedly making it Vindicated by History.
  • FX adores The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Live-Action TV

  • The Big Bang Theory is quickly becoming this for CBS lately: promos and bumps for the show can be seen in stores like GameStop (on GameStop TV), got signed to do three more seasons (making the total six thus far) and now it's even going to be shown five nights a week later this year.
    • It's starting to become adored on TBS also. TBS even shot scores of new promos (including a five-minute one for National Cinemedia, one of the movie theatre preshow companies) with the cast to promote the reruns.
      • So much so that three days a week they air three hour blocks of the show.
  • Fictional example: in Network, the network president (Ned Beatty) refuses to cancel The Howard Beale Show despite tanking ratings, because Beale is basically acting as his mouthpiece.
  • The US version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is perhaps the Trope Codifier and poster boy of this. The show was a massive hit for ABC in a time when the network was struggling. They quickly capitalized on the popularity of the show, giving it multiple airings per week (up to four days a week) in order to keep the ratings up. Unfortunately Millionaire's overplay escalated the show's downfall and cancellation. On the bright side, it still enjoys success in the syndication format.
  • On Nickelodeon, iCarly is also guaranteed to have a lot of episodes running on a given day (at least three or four a day on average, sometimes more on weekends).
    • During summer 2010, Big Time Rush and Victorious were both big ones for Nickelodeon. They would rerun at least two episodes of both every single day. Not counting Friday and Saturday night blocks. Big Time Rush had just enough episodes to cover a full week, but Victorious only had eight episodes to air.
    • Nickelodeon does this with any "big" Teen Com that has any form of success - Drake and Josh comes to mind fairly quickly and they even aired the Christmas Special over and over—even when it wasn't CHRISTMAS, and then iCarly, and then Victorious, and then...
    • Plus, when the network's teen-coms air new two-part specials, after their airing, it'll probably rerun lots of times shortly afterward. When "iStart a Fan War" premiered in mid-November, it aired a total of nine times in the remainder of the month alone. Similarly with "iParty with Victorious", because Nickelodeon went so far as to make an extended version of it.
  • Nick at Nite is every bit as bad with The George Lopez Show, probably worse. First, they would run marathons of the show for every occasion imaginable using any excuse they could get, no matter how shoddy. Then they did away with the excuses, and began showing marathons of George Lopez without even giving an excuse to do so. On multiple occasions, they aired over 40 hours of it in one week, setting up a bizarre situation often where his self-titled Talk Show on TBS is competing with his own old sitcom.
    • It got so ridiculous that Nick at Nite decided to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day (which in America at least is viewed as basically being a day to celebrate Irish heritage) with "Luck of the Lopez" week.
    • Over the past 7-ish years, the entire Nick at Nite lineup was revamped multiple times and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The Nanny, Malcolm in the Middle, and Family Matters have all come and gone....but the freaking The George Lopez Show remains untouched in the lineup after all this time, despite being arguably less popular than the other shows listed in this sentence!
    • MTV Tr3s has gotten in on the George Lopez overplaying fun now too.
  • Nick at Nite also loved The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air when they had the syndication rights to it. There were several times where they'd show four episodes in one two-hour block. It was also an "introductory" staple for a while, where it would be the first show after the regular Nick schedule ends, possibly to attract a younger crowd.
  • After Nick at Nite managed to deal The George Lopez Show a similar fate as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in the eyes of many viewers (see above), they're now on My Wife and Kids. It doesn't seem to have suffered the Millionaire effect quite yet, but if they keep this up, it's likely only a matter of time before history repeats itself.
    • Part of what happens with Nick at Nite and TV Land is that when they get the rights to a new show, they always give it something of an introductory marathon to get people into the groove of watching it. They tend to do it with most shows when they first get the rights to them.
  • Big Brother on Channel 4. The last season was showing about 7 hours of footage every day. It remains to be seen if Channel 5 will give it a similar treatment. A mix of Meddling Executives and ironically, Screwed by the Network; Endemol got a "Live Feed Every Year" clause into the contract. So, in the later years at least, C4 put the live feed on between midnight and 6AM. There is no such clause in C5's contract.
    • Channel Five, as of January 2012, is showing an entirely reasonable 3 hours a day of Big Brother. However, since C5 owner Richard Desmond mandates endless coverage of Big Brother in the various newspapers he owns, it's now a network favourite across multiple media.
    • It looks like Come Dine With Me is primed to become Four's most adored when BB finally ends at the end of summer 2010.
  • It was big news in 2011 when Channel 4 announced it would no longer show Friends. E4 aired it as much as 7 or 8 times a day. Friends achieved something few American Long Runners manage in Britain, with every episode being shown, and in Prime Time - unlike many of its compatriots. In the end Comedy Central took up the Friends slack.
    • It has also tried to use Scrubs, and later The Big Bang Theory to the same degree, although they don't get quite the same level of coverage ans Friends did.
    • Averted, surprisingly, with Glee, to which E4 has the rights to run episodes from the first two seasons, How I Met Your Mother, Desperate Housewives and several other high profile American shows. E4's business model largely revolves around buying up the rights to American shows before they're popular and hoping they turn into smash hits.
    • Channel 4 also adored The Simpsons for a while. A Private Eye cartoon depicted two C4 execs looking at a schedule of nothing but Simpsons episodes, thankful that they were showing something other than Friends.
  • You can also add American Idol which Fox now airs TOGETHER with Glee.
  • There is one Russian Reality Show called House-2. Its plot involves a bunch of people locked in a big house and "trying to build love". It is very successful (licenses are sold to several countries) has a huge fanbase and Hype Backlash-caused hatedom. There was a time when it was aired almost 24/7 until they lost a big lawsuit concerning sexual content. Now they have to air it only in late evenings.
  • Pick any day of the week. If USA Network isn't running a marathon of Law and Order Special Victims Unit, it's probably running a marathon of Law and Order: Criminal Intent. If not, it's most likely NCIS. Also, every weekend is a marathon of one of those shows (or Burn Notice or Psych or occasionally Monk). Every. Weekend.
    • They're doing it with House now too.
    • They're getting worse. If a show's season just ended or went to Mid Season Break, expect USA to show a marathon. Burn Notice got two days to show various episodes, and White Collar got two days in the same week to do the same thing. USA essentially has nothing for daytime programming.
      • USA is getting really bad with their SVU marathons as well. For the most part, they'll have a decent way to tie all the episodes together (Episodes showing the relationship between Elliot and Olivia, an "Olivia's Greatest Hits" marathon on Mariska Hargitay's birthday.) One of the marathons' theme? Episodes where the criminals were blonde women.
    • Incredibly, USA's weekly marathoning of NCIS was a huge factor in the show gaining viewers over eight (and counting) seasons, a practically unheard-of feat in a TV landscape of a show's ratings starting high and falling or steadying from there. The show has broken its own highest ratings mark every year, with its current[when?] high set on a regular, mid-season Season 8 episode (helped by a blizzard that kept most of the Eastern Seaboard indoors).
  • Top Gear on Dave. Each episode is an hour long and it's not uncommon for it to be broadcast in six slots per day. This has been routinely lampshaded on the programme itself, and even Dave's programming mentions it.
  • Mash is the darling of the Hallmark Channel—it airs approximately twice every four hours on the channel.
    • Well, at least it was until the Martha Stewart combine overran the channel's daytime schedule at the end of 2010, leading to a M*A*S*H-free Hallmark. What followed was a whiplash inversion of the trope when nearly half of the Stewart-controlled seven hour block was converted into Little House On the Prairie space barely a month after launch.
    • Mash also used to be this for FX, taking up anywhere from a third to nearly half a day of programming. This was before FX started getting its own original shows like The Shield, and without its own original programming, the channel was mainly movies and re-runs, and M*A*S*H had so many episodes it was easy to fill lots and lots of air time.
  • Jay Leno is an example of this happening with a person instead of a show. In 1992, NBC picked him to host The Tonight Show over David Letterman when Johnny Carson retired. In 2009/2010, after some serious Executive Meddling, he returned to The Tonight Show after an abortive shot at a Prime Time Variety Show, screwing over Conan O'Brien and causing one hell of an uproar in the process.
    • This is an odd case, though, as NBC couldn't make up their mind on how to bestow adoration in the O'Brien/Leno situation (the Letterman situation was arguably decided five years before it happened, with Leno being the permanent Monday night host of the show before Carson's retirement). Initially, Leno was essentially fired from the show despite top ratings, being told in 2004 that O'Brien would get the show in 2009 regardless of Leno's ratings situation; so Leno was, seemingly, screwed by the network's adoration for O'Brien. Yet when the time came to actually fire him, he was then in a way screwed by the network's adoration for him, as they wouldn't let him leave for another network (though his tenure on the show was terminated, he was still under contract for NBC). This led to them giving him his own prime-time show with a mandated format change, which bombed at the same time as O'Brien's run on The Tonight Show was doing poorly in the ratings. Cue more clueless meddling, and the end result is that O'Brien left NBC and Leno returned to The Tonight Show, but the show's ratings are still shaky due to the backlash, and it would appear nobody was the "winner"...well maybe TBS who gave Conan his new show...and TNT, who got Southland, which was also a victim of the whole debacle.
  • The Biggest Loser seems to have become this for NBC. It seems right after one season ends, the next one is on 2 weeks later. It doesn't help it's a 2 hour show, and it's on for a several weeks at best.
  • In New Zealand, Two and A Half Men is played at least once a day on TV 2, and Friends was at one time airing at 3 different time slots at 3 different points in the series, with all 3 playing in the same 2 hour block.
  • In Australia, the Nine Network used to have a spectacular case of this for Two and A Half Men. Every weeknight immediately after the news, in the filler timeslot once taken up by many a gameshow, Two and a Half Men played for years (except in regional areas where it was axed in favour of a half-hour of local news). Following Charlie Sheen's swandive off the deep end, Nine seems to have shifted this treatment and its former daily timeslots to The Big Bang Theory; there is nary a glimpse of Two and A Half Men anywhere on the network anymore. They shifted it over to their secondary channel 'GO!' to hide their shame, and even then it runs comparatively infrequently. Meanwhile, Top Gear also seems to have become a similar object of Nine's affection.
    • Some have speculated that this is a conspiracy hatched by Fox to get viewers to buy Foxtel
  • At any given hour of the day, Law and Order is guaranteed to be on TNT.
    • Swapped for or followed by Bones.
  • Disney Channel is getting ridiculously bad about this. For the past decade, the network has been broadcasting and overpromoting its small roster of four-to-six shows. These same shows tend to reuse the same actors and promote the same actors in movies which are just like the shows the actors star in.
    • They aired Hannah Montana so often that was actually surprising that it disappeared from programing almost immediately following its final episode. A couple months into 2011, and it was completely gone, replaced by Shake It Up, A.N.T. Farm, and Jessie. Many won't be surprised if Wizards of Waverly Place ultimately suffers the same fate. Say what you will about Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network, but with the exception of Phineas and Ferb and Fish Hooks, all that is ever played on Disney is the aforementioned Tween Coms with obnoxious laugh tracks.
    • It also gets irritating with their newer shows. Shows like Wizards of Waverly Place and The Suite Life on Deck have enough episodes to show different ones every weekday, but they also constantly show Shake It Up, which as of July 2011 is almost finished with its first season, and A.N.T. Farm, which as of July 2011 only has 6 episodes, and they show all six during the day.
    • The biggest frustration in Disney's case: Some networks like USA or Nick at Nite have somewhat of an excuse in that they have to pay for the rights to air syndicated programming and budget issues could be the reason they limit the number of shows and feature them in blocks/marathons. Disney has no such excuse because they own 100 percent of everything they run, including a ginormous library of past shows that includes many with fan and critical acclaim, and instead they insist on filling up their time slots with multiple episodes of the same handful of shows they've recently released.
  • ABC Family is also a huge fan of America's Funniest Home Videos. The station's original shows usually air over Monday and Tuesday night. Unless they're showing a movie, Wednesday through Friday nights are going to be a block of AFHV. Its original series The Secret Life of the American Teenager has since joined as well, with 1-episode reruns airing at 5 pm every weekday.
  • The Canadian Expy of Comedy Central, The Comedy Network, ruthlessly over-promoted Corner Gas. Nowadays, it promotes Corner Gas' "successors" Hiccups and Dan for Mayor quite hard. In fact, it gave each a huge marathon during Canada Day 2010. One wonders if they're just going his to fill Canadian content quotas, or is it because it's one of the few shows TCN actually has a hand in.
    • With shows like Air Farce, 22 Minutes, The Red Green Show, etc., it's the second one. Because TCN has/had a stake in the shows, it can air them as encore performances later the same week CTV airs them.
    • They also gave eight seasons to the universally-hated Open Mike With Mike Bullard, which is seven more than any other network would have given the show. When the Network first debuted, it's schedule essentially consisted of the few things they had the rights to -- Just For Laughs programming, Whose Line Is It,Anyways?, Saturday Night Live, assorted British programming, and Open Mike. At points, they would air both an episode of Open Mike, and The Best Of Open Mike on the same day, despite the show only having been on the air for a couple months.
  • Another Canadian example is Family Channel (our Disney Channel). Canadian-made Kid Coms seem to be crammed down your throat as well. The Latest Buzz, Life with Derek, and Overruled!, anyone?
  • Affiliate syndication is likely to do this with either the darling network show of the moment (watch out for How I Met Your Mother in the fall 2010 syndication blocks) or court shows (since there are plenty of them out there). Likely justified, as local affiliates—and especially their sister stations—don't have the same budget as the major networks and need material that they can air on the cheap. The big network like NBC or CBS doesn't directly own the local station but won't have a problem with an affiliate running its own syndicated reruns.
    • The same case with stations which air locally-produced "daytime shows" which are barely disguised Infomercials for local businesses and fully scripted. Literally only the person in the station's control room may be watching, but the station gets the money from the sponsor even if the show has no ratings to speak of, so the rest of the station's market has to suffer through it because it gives said businesses "exposure".
      • This is, of course, the exact same reason that those stations also run infomercials in the dead of night.
  • In a cross-over with Network Decay, the Syfy does this a lot. For awhile, the fixation was Ghost Hunters. No matter the time of day, chances are that 4.5 out of 5 times they'll be airing an episode of either it or its spinoff Ghost Hunters International. Consider that Syfy has a stable of shows that it show (the Stargates, Farscape, etc.), but you have to actually HUNT those down.
    • Which is interesting considering Australia's SyFy is usually chock-a-block full of Stargate and its spinoffs.
  • MTV has lived and breathed this trope throughout its entire existence. Those who recall the endless The Real World/Road Rules marathons from the '90s might find their later The Hills spin off marathons warmly nostalgic.
  • Local news on most stations. Justified, in that TV stations have to run news in order to get a broadcast license from the FCC. It also benefits them in that it's cheaper to produce news than pay for syndicated programming, and it can earn the station some respect if it's high quality.
  • GSN does this with Deal or No Deal; on any given day, it likely fills every third time slot. Of the remainder, about a third or so consists of Family Feud reruns.
  • In Australia, Network Ten spares no expense in promoting whichever long-running reality show it has going at the time - over the years, this role has been filled by the likes Australian Idol, Big Brother and currently[when?] MasterChef. All of these ran in some form at least once a day for an hour, and in the case of Big Brother received no end of supplementary programming at all hours. ,Though Big Brother eventually died off, the network tried everything they could to keep the audience and heavily promoted it. Not that it worked, but at that point it had had a very solid run for eight or nine years.
  • Spike seems to feel that there's no such thing as too many all-day CSI marathons.
  • When Caprica first began, the Syfy showed it nonstop. Think about that. Yes, multiple marathons per week at times of a series that had yet to air ten episodes. Enjoy it while you can, Caprica.[1]
    • You called it. Caprica has been canceled after a year and a half. Its replacement: another Battlestar Galactica spin off.
  • The UK's Channel One regularly aired five or six episodes of Star Trek (The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise) on a typical day, with one or two being repeats. The catch-ups they did on Saturdays meant each episode of Voyager was broadcast on three occasions. Since then, the channel slot is Sky Atlantic, and it's still filling the daytime schedule with Star Trek.
  • A&E's line up these days consist of running one specific show constantly from 2pm to 2am every day. The show in question varies between CSI: Miami, Criminal Minds (who gets TWO marathons a week), Dog The Bounty Hunter or Billy the Exterminator. Other A&E shows are so rarely ever seen, you would be forgiven for knowing the channel airs anything else.
    • Storage Wars has replaced Criminal Minds. It is shown all night at least 3 times a week, and that's when they're not running marathons of it. They frequently show nothing but Storage Wars day Saturday and Sunday.
  • Teen Nick can basically be called "The Degrassi and anything like it" channel.
    • Back when Teen Nick was still The N, when they first picked up One on One reruns in early 2006 they began running the show ad nauseam, with the occasional Degrassi re-run in the prime time slots and new episodes would air infrequently of their other shows. A year later in spring 2007, The N's line-up was two episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, then two episodes of One on One, then two episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, then two episodes of One on One. Degrassi completely disappeared from the schedule, save for re-runs at 3AM on the weekends.
    • Degrassi on TeenNick is an especially unusual case since Nick / Viacom does not own merchandising rights to the show, and Epitome Pictures makes separate agreements for DVD production.
    • Zoey 101 and Drake and Josh re-runs have more or less taken over Teen Nick's entire schedule during the day and early evening. It's to the point that even long-time fans of both shows have expressed annoyance at the shows being played way too much in a given day.
  • Before it was replaced by a 24-hour version of The N, Nick GAS would air almost nothing but Legends of the Hidden Temple, Nick Arcade, and the Double Dare shows. By the time it was shut down, the channel was, by all accounts, running on autopilot, having dwindled down to just those shows.
  • Comedy Central loves Tosh.0, to the point where other shows have gotten canceled or moved to crappy spots because they aren't as cheap to produce.
    • For the longest time, old (~1980-1995) episodes of Saturday Night Live was all-purpose caulk pumped into a highly porous daily schedule . As of the mid-2000s, it was replaced as such by Mad TV once they lost the SNL rights. Then they lost the rights to Mad TV (after it being off their schedule for several months) and eventually Scrubs and Futurama reruns have taken their place.
    • Back in the early days of the network Mystery Science Theater 3000 was the network darling and cornerstone of their programming.
    • Recently[when?], in the wake of Charlie Sheen's rather public meltdown, Comedy Central UK has started broadcasting a lot more episodes of Two and a Half Men, along with peppering Chuck Lorre-style vanity cards in the advert breaks.
    • Also, at night (from about 12-7) all they usually show is Comedy Central Presents.
      • This is replaced by the Secret Stash on weekends: fully uncensored comedy specials and mostly uncensored movies.
    • Until about 2002 it was shocking if a week went by without them airing the 1986 bomb Stewardess School.
    • The network still airs Chappelle's Show during primetime, more than five years after the series officially ended.
  • In 2008, Discovery Channel was obsessed with Deadliest Catch, using any excuse to run a marathon. This wouldn't be so bad, except they only had three seasons worth of coverage, and they showed at least four hours of the show a day. By the end of the week, you were all caught up if you were a new viewer. They have gotten better, though, at least moving on from Deadliest Catch to other new favorite shows. Like Dirty Jobs and Cash Cab.
    • In a strange case of a network becoming infatuated with a U.S. state rather than a show, Discovery's parent company has recently[when?] been milking Alaska for reality show material, thus resulting in shows like Gold Rush Alaska and Flying Wild Alaska. Discovery is no stranger to paying tribute to the blue collar lifestyle (see the aforementioned Dirty Jobs and Deadliest Catch), but not until late 2010 did they focus this much attention on Alaska specifically.
    • Discovery hyped up their MythBusters airings back when the show was still on. The show has always been a fairly strong standby of the network (with various marathons happening for one reason or another) but since the beginning of the fall 2010 season, MythBusters weekend marathons have become a regular occurrence (including a Christmas and New Year's marathon running on back-to-back weekends).
  • Adult Swim
    • Their latest[when?] favorite seems to be Childrens Hospital, as they practically save at least one Ad Bumpers each week for that show. With the season 5 premiere of Robot Chicken, Adult Swim scheduled the shows so that reruns of Children's Hospital would come on at the half hour, and new episodes of Robot Chicken at the :45.
    • They also seem to like Delocated.
    • If Tim and Eric so much as sneeze on something, AS will pick it up for a 3 season trial run. And you will like it, they'll make you like it god damn it, because they're the two funniest people on planet, apparently. It helps that a large segment of their target demographic tends to be drunk and/or stoned when they tend to air Tim and Eric's stuff (in the 10:00-11:00 range), given that Tim and Eric's target seems to be "people who are habitually drunk and/or stoned. Especially stoned."
  • ITV and its reality programming, specifically, The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent. Both shows are repeated frequently, have their own spin-off shows (The Xtra Factor and Britain's Got More Talent) aired on the sister channel, ITV 2, and have so much advertising and promotional material it's hard not to go anywhere in the UK without seeing something to do with The X Factor. Not to mention the numerous specials and reality shows based on prominent faces of either program (Cheryl Cole, Dannii Minogue, and Piers Morgan in particular).
  • For the longest time, The History Channel was The Modern Marvels Channel: Guaranteed No Historical Documentaries (or we'll give you a free DVD set of Modern Marvels!)
    • Before that it was Secrets of World War II Channel. Before that, it was Battleships of WWII.
    • History International Loves History's Mysteries, usually playing it three or four times a day.
    • And in general subjects, History Channel had went through various "Adoring a single topic in history"—Civil War First, then WWII, then Hitler. And for about a year, they were constantly playing documentaries about The Freemasons and Knights Templar, then it was Disasters (specifically Seconds from Disaster).
    • A&E was joked about being "The Hitler Channel" until they spun off The History Channel, which kept a large amount of Hitler-centric programming until the early 2010s.
    • At the moment[when?], thanks to the popularity of Pawn Stars, The History Channel has constantly been playing that show and shows like it. (other TV stations have also jumped on the "reality show where guys buy and sell things" bandwagon) Due to the 2012 Apocalypse craze, the station is also airing a lot of "armageddon" and conspiracy theory shows. Aliens in particular have been a popular topic.
  • The History Channel always runs a Band of Brothers marathon about every four months or so.
    • Quite often it coincides with anniversaries of events from WWII but unless its D-Day the episodes have almost nothing to do with what its commemorating.
  • Animax Latin America also has Distraction, a 16-episode live-action game show (one of the first signs of the channel's Network Decay), which, to this day, is still airing there despite the short amount of episodes.
  • ION shows Ghost Whisperer, Without a Trace, and Criminal Minds on weekdays. That's it. Nothing but those three shows between 3 pm and midnight ET, which is the network's entire weekday schedule - your local affiliate likely stocks the remaining hours with paid or religious programming. Granted, this likely means they are the only shows they can afford...
  • How It's Made and variations thereupon for The Science Channel.
  • Another show adored by NBC is The Apprentice. Despite heavily declining ratings and Donald Trump being a complete joke now, the show continues to run and Trump's high-concept Ratings Stunt to run for President will most likely assure more seasons to come.
  • NBC had Series/Dateline fell victim to this about ten years ago. It seemed that every night, except Thursday, you could find an airing of the show on NBC. Now, it, and 48 Hours are adored by ID.
  • The Inspiration network has Our House, Highway to Heaven, The Waltons, and Wind at My Back.
  • Reality Shows in general are officially the Creator's Pet in Italy.[2] Spanish-Italian showgirl Natalia Estrada explicitly stated that she would return on TV only at the end—if any[3] - of the reality show craze.
  • At this point HGTV is almost entirely made up of House Hunters and House Hunters International. Go ahead, flip over right now and check. Told you so.
  • NBC's flagging Saturday Morning schedule was propped up by Saved by the Bell. They loved its ratings so much that they had Peter Engel create another show with the same basic premise with a twist. When that got good ratings, they cancelled every cartoon on the schedule, gave half of Saturday mornings to its other favorite show (Today), and gave the other half to Engel and friends. And thus was born TNBC, an entire block of nothing but Saved by the Bell clones.
  • HBO produced seven seasons of Arliss despite its consistently low ratings and reviews well below the station's standard. HBO appears to have believed that it targeted a niche audience that otherwise would not subscribe to HBO.
  • BBC America loves Top Gear and the revival of Doctor Who. Years old reruns of both remain in the network's daily lineup. When new episodes are aired, they're the only two shows broadcast in special, odd timeslots so the episodes can have commercials and have no time-saving edits made to the episodes (but only for the first few airings, some cuts are made for later reruns).
  • Channel Five is in love with CSI and Law and Order, tune in on any other night and you're sure to get a good three hours of repeats. Gets worse on their extra channels like Five USA.
  • Showtime loves Weeds so much that they can't seem to imagine a world without them running it, as they've renewed it to run several more seasons than it was supposed to (the plan was to run it for four seasons, it's on seven now). Showtime even has a deal with producer Lionsgate to run the show...and only that show.
  • Does WE (a rival network to Lifetime, basically Oxygen with a lower budget) run anything that isn't named Bridezillas?
  • TNT seems to really love Franklin and Bash as it probably gets promoted more than any other show on that network (even Rizzoli and Isles and Leverage).
  • The Brazilian People+Arts (now renamed Liv) at a certain point broadcast American Chopper at least 4 times a day.
  • The Real Housewives of [any wealthy city] is extremely common on Bravo.
  • Italian network Rai4 seems to really love Charmed; it is rarely absent from its schedule.
  • Australia's SBS has a love affair with Inspector Rex, which they pretty much admit on their special Inspector Rex website. The show has more-or-less been slotted in at 7.30pm on Thursday since 1997, and marathons are not uncommon.
  • Back in 2009 TV Land got the rights to Roseanne and Married... with Children and one could tell they were quite enthusiastic about it because every night featured a three hour block of Roseanne followed by a three hour block of Married... with Children or viseversa.
  • For Cartoon Network it was Dude, What Would Happen?. This wasn't the first time the station tried to get over a Live Action show, but it was definitely the show they put the most effort into trying to become popular. It started when Cartoon Network launched an entire block of Live Action shows, CN Real, in an effort to rebrand their network into being closer to Disney Channel and Nickelodeon. It went over about as well as you can think and the ratings for the entire Network tanked hard. After dropping CN Real, the network was still determined to put over Dude What Would Happen, and continued airing it for Two Years despite horrible ratings and overwhelming negative viewer response before finally getting cancelled.
    • Lately Cartoon Network has REALLY been hyping up Level Up, first the movie and then the series. The show has been getting ads big in number and in length, you'll be hard-pressed to go through a commercial break that DOESN'T have an ad for the show.
    • Not only that, after Level Up premiered, they've rerun it every weeknight even though only one episode had premiered. Plus, the second episode aired commercial-free, as will the third. CN's cartoons could only dream of this kind of attention.
  • If you turn on G4 at any given time, you can expect to find reruns of COPS or Cheaters. In some cases, they've even played the exact same episode twice in a row.
    • According to Kevin Pereira, the shows are an easy way for the network to fund its original programming, despite having almost nothing in common demographically.
  • Tru TV is more or less obsessed with Operation Repo and many of its non-Operation Repo shows either seem to be "Operation Repo in a X" or "People Just As Trashy As The Operation Repo Cast Doing Similar Things".
  • Animal Planet, like History Channel, has jumped on the "regular/redneck guys doing jobs that vaguely relate to our station content" and has been giving a ton of ads and air time to shows like Call of the Wildman and Pit Boss. Lately they've also been obsessed with Finding Bigfoot.
    • At the height of its popularity, The Crocodile Hunter was adored by Animal Planet, though since Steve Irwin's death, reruns are shown very rarely.
  • Bravo adores Top Chef, especially when it has new episodes.
    • To contrast, Top Chef: Texas began airing when fellow Bravo reality-competition show Work Of Art was a little over halfway through. Before, Wo A would air at 9pm then repeat at 11pm, with something in between. When TC:T started, Wo A aired at 10... and repeated at 11... and again at 12. If you missed Wo A, you had to wait 3 hours before seeing it again. Then the following week, leading up to new Wo A episodes would be... however many of the new TC episodes they had leading up to the newest one of those.
  • Two words, Food Network. Which quickly morphed into the Iron Chef and anything like it network. Cupcake Wars, Chopped and Restaurant: Impossible repeats seem to appear all day every day. You now have to go the their sister network Cooking Channel to see actual instructional cooking.
    • Then there is Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives — and anything featuring Guy Fieri for that matter, which can air anywhere between 5 to 16 times a day.
  • TLC (and to a lesser extent, Discovery Health) shows nothing but A Baby Story and other birth-related shows on weekdays from about 9 AM-4 PM. The weird thing is, they seem to only show old repeats, which means that some of these babies being born are in middle school now.
  • YTV completely adores iCarly and Mr. Young.
  • Ever since Comedy Central UK picked up the rights to Friends, they've been using any excuse to air it as much as possible. It started out as daily double-bills that are repeated at night...and then the compilations started...

Top 50 Episodes?
Fair enough.
The A-Z of Friends?
Fine.
The Best of Ross/Monica/Chandler/Phoebe/Rachel/Joey?
'kay.
The Friends Guide to Work/Dating/Leisure?
Okay...I guess.
Compilation of The Christmas & Thanksgiving Episodes?
...Um, it's March.

The Best of Gunther?
—What?! OH COME ON!!! Gunther?! Really?! GUNTHER?!
  • Whose Line Is It Anyway?, in a sense, at the time it was first on ABC. Its ratings, especially since it aired against Friends at the height of its popularity, were never all that great (any other show with its ratings would have been cancelled), but it was so cheap to produce they kept it around to keep the slot filled.


Professional Wrestling

  • WCW itself was adored not so much by the network, but by Ted Turner himself. It was his baby/vanity project, as he credited WCW's predecessor, Georgia Championship Wrestling, with helping get Super Station WTBS noticed in its early days (along with Atlanta Braves baseball). The fact that it lost money for most of its existence was of no concern to him since, for someone like Ted, the amount of money that WCW lost was never more than pocket change. If it hadn't been for the AOL/Time Warner merger, WCW would almost certainly be in business. However, WCW was most definitely not adored by an AOL exec named Jamie Kellner, who within a few weeks on the job cancelled all professional wrestling related programming.


Sports

  • Professional sports. Immensely popular, sure, but try to imagine what it's like for people who don't like sports to have a program you have no interest in that can preempt the shows you DO want to watch seemingly at any time, rarely ends at the scheduled time (sometimes causing the next show to begin "in progress" or be skipped entirely), and when it does end and you think your show is about to start... here comes the post game show. And then the other networks only run reruns against it because they don't want to have to compete with the show "everyone" is watching. For that, you can blame Heidi.
    • This was actually lampshaded by on the Series 16 premiere of Top Gear in January 2011:

Jeremy Clarkson: Can I just say how nice it is to be back where we belong? BBC2, 8:00, Sunday night. Unless of course somebody's organized a snooker tournament, in which case, happy Easter!

  • Football in the United States. If it's autumn and your network carries the NFL, expect a pop-up ad or commercial every five minutes reminding you when the next game is and who's playing. Even when it's a sports station like ESPN, the NFL will be promoted far more than anything else it carries. Those above problems with preemption? Baseball fans have the same problem when they're waiting for the World Series and Fox won't cut away from James Brown and Terry Bradshaw yukking it up...
  • Tennis on Eurosport. Go to any forum of a particular sport that isn't Association Football (or Tennis obviously) and you are guaranteed to find that most European fans there absolutely despise Tennis for the sole reason that they've spent large chunks of the last 20 years wanting to watch their favorite sport but not able to, as Eurosport was preempting it with an overtimed Tennis match, usually from the lower rounds of some unimportant tournament. Cycling and Basketball fans are especially prone to fly into a rage from this.
  • For Canadian sport networks, hockey is the most aired sport on Sportsnet, TSN (The Expy of ESPN) and CBC. This really shouldn't be much surprise in Canada.
    • And even then there are network favourites. Before Hockey Night in Canada switched to a early and late game broadcast in 1995, if you wanted to see any Canadian team aside from the Maple Leafs or the Canadiens, you either had to hope it they were playing in Toronto or Montreal, or that they made the playoffs and Toronto or Montreal weren't playing that night. The absurdity of this is indicated that in the mid-1980s, when Wayne Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers were the best team in the league, it was almost impossible for someone in Eastern Canada to ever seen them on TV.


Video Games

  • Valve's obsession with continually updating Team Fortress 2 and expanding the Left 4 Dead franchise has been viewed as taking precedence over making new games, Half-Life 2: Episode 3 in particular, even though separate groups work on each series of games.
    • This is mainly due to the fact that TF2 and L4D are their most popular products.
    • Blizzard Entertainment was seen to suffer from this as well, as they worked on various Warcraft games for almost a decade straight before StarCraft II and Diablo III were announced. (The one StarCraft product in the making, Star Craft Ghost, became Vaporware.)
  • Square Enix seems to be fond of Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy VII in particular.
    • As well as Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy II, which have been ported or remade for MSX 2, Wonder Swan Color, PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, mobile phones, PlayStation Portable, Virtual Console, PlayStation Network and iOS.
      • There is also the fact that Final Fantasy I and II are the most simple games of the saga. They include little to no plot (which means there is no translation), few enemies (for a final fantasy game), few classes (5 in FFI, none in FFII) and the game mechanics in general are simple. The fact that they have so many ports is most likely due to how cheap making said port actually is. More complex games (except for FFIV/FFVII) hardly ever see the light, most likely since they are not as easy to make as FFI/FFII but not as popular as FFIV/FFVII. This would explain why FFIII is the game with less ports in all the saga.
    • Final Fantasy IV is another example, it being ported or remade for PlayStation, Wonder Swan Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Virtual Console, FOMA 903i / 703i and PlayStation Portable.
    • Understandably, Final Fantasy is a Cash Cow Franchise for Square, and justly widely enjoyed. However, true to this effect, it has a habit of overshadowing other efforts that the company occasionally puts forth. The game Xenogears was hit particularly hard by this, when its budget and production schedule slashed in favor of the soon-to-be-released Final Fantasy VIII, resulting in a sharp decrease in quality and quantity of gameplay in the second half of the game.
  • With that logic, one could make the same case with Ubisoft and Rayman 2, which was originally released on PC and Nintendo 64, then ported to the PlayStation, Sega Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS, iOS and Nintendo 3DS. And that's without counting the Game Boy Color game as well as the Game Boy Advance version of Rayman 3 (which is in fact a 2D Rayman 2 game with Dark Lums and other Rayman 3 elements hastily slapped in.)
  • Tales of Phantasia for the Super Famicom has gotten four remakes: first for the PlayStation, second for the Gameboy Advance, third for the PlayStation Portable, and fourth again for the PlayStation Portable with updated battle graphics as part of Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon X. Unfortunately, only the Gameboy Advance version, widely considered the weakest version, has seen an official English version.


Western Animation

  • Hello, South Park! Not only is it one of (if not still) the most dominating show on Comedy Central, but for a time, it was also right beside South Park on TBS for marathon/back to back showings (four episodes in a row!) weekday and weeknight.
  • Cartoon Network:
    • The original Ben 10 used to be like this. The sequels, on the other hand, tend to only be shown a couple times a week.
    • It's a different story in the UK, as (along with Chowder and Johnny Test) Ben 10 and Ben 10 Alien Force dominate the channel. It's got to the point where the late evening 'Cartoon Cartoon' show now consists of nothing but Chowder and Ben 10 Alien Force reruns.
    • Adventure Time. In addition to weekly marathons, it's used to round out most 15-minute blocks left over after movies.
    • While we are talking about Scooby Doo. This show and almost all of its multiple incarnations completely dominated the network in the early 2000s. The show inexplicably re-surged in popularity and Cartoon Network took advantage. Several new movies and series were aired and it seemed like if a show wasn't on Toonami or a popular Cartoon Cartoon, it was bumped for more Scooby-Doo.
    • Add a further comment to the Scooby Doo part for Cartoon Network: they're still taking any moment they can to play Scooby Doo movies at any chance they can. That and Johnny Test.
      • There are also massive amounts of daytime being used up for the Scooby-Doo animated movies. Sometimes three of them. In a row.
      • Boomerang, at least in the UK, held what it called a Scooby Summer. For the entirety of the summer holidays, every waking hour in the schedule would be filled by Scooby-Doo. No Looney Tunes. No Danger Mouse. Just Scooby-Doo. All day. EVERY. SINGLE. SUMMER. The worst part? The adverts made it seem like it was the viewers' fault. "You begged," they enthused, "you pleaded!" Yeah. We did. But it didn't stop. Went over the top eventually. Half term break coming up? Easter around the corner? Boomerang will be having a "Scooby Week" or two. To make matters worse, we now have Scooby airing on not only Boomerang, but also Cartoon Network AND Cartoon Network Too. Plus, CN now produces live-action Scooby-Doo TV movies with a CG Scooby that's similar to the one from the features but on a smaller budget! And they're making it a series of movies!
    • The network began to shill its CN Real block. The scheduling wasn't so bad; the live-action shows mainly stayed within the block. However, they were promoted over every cartoon and the kicker was a video featuring Andrew W.K. proudly proclaiming that Cartoon Network was more than just cartoons.
    • Also, in the mid-2000s, they would show nothing but Codename: Kids Next Door back to back on Saturday mornings.
    • From '99 to 2003 you could not go one day without seeing either Dexter's Laboratory or The Powerpuff Girls playing on the network. Both of these shows were practically CN's mascots during that time.
    • The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack was hit with this literally from the instant it premiered—CN started airing it multiple times per day even though there was only one episode. Ironic, given that CN stopped caring halfway through the second season.
    • Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy is certainly worth a mention. Since its debut in January 1999, it has been a big hit on Cartoon Network, has aired a total of 70 episodes running through 5 and 1/4 seasons and a series-ending movie and, even after being out of production for over a year, it still airs at least 2 episodes every Monday-Friday. Suffice it to say, it is admired by both viewers and CN.
    • Courage the Cowardly Dog became the new 'it' show during and after the reign of PPG and Dexter's Lab, then, even after it was cancelled, it came back for reruns and could be seen airing every day for a time during 2010 and early 2011.
    • The Amazing World of Gumball. Huge, huge buildup: They showed a "sneak peek" of it six days before its premiere. The day it debuted, there was a countdown bug on screen. And already it's averaging at least one rerun a day.
    • The Looney Tunes Show seems to be this as well, in that, like Adventure Time above, its "Merrie Melodies" segments are occasionally used to round out the minutes after other shows. Also, like The Amazing World of Gumball, there was a countdown bug on the screen the day it premiered. Also, during the 4th of July weekend of 2011, the network aired random episodes of the show that were supposedly made up until that point, along with random airings of classic Looney Tunes shorts, Space Jam, and Looney Tunes: Back in Action in continuous loops. Back in the day, they used to have "June Bugs", a 72-hour block in June of nothing but Bugs Bunny cartoons.
    • Captain Planet was transmitted day and night. In Latin America, it was transmitted during weekends (the time of the day kids are mostly free) for four hours in a row. It's one of the reasons why such a light-hearted series could triumph during the Dark Age.
    • Nowadays, Regular Show seems to be heading this way, to the point of airing it 3 times a day on Tuesday afternoons.
    • Total Drama, seasonally. You won't find it in the Winter. But when Spring/Summer comes,it comes back in full force with a new season. Heck Cartoon Network is actually willing to sacrifice an hour of Johnny Test for its previous seasons to prepare for the new one.
    • The High Fructose Adventures of The Annoying Orange. It hasn't even "officially" premiered yet and there's still at least one rerun per weekday.
  • Speaking of Boomerang, they decided to devote weekdays and entire weekends to nothing but The Flintstones. To the point where it gets so bad that if you here the theme song one more freakin' time you'll scream. Whats a girl gotta do to see some Looney Tunes come back again?
  • For CN Asia viewers, it's Tom and Jerry or The Pink Panther. The entire afternoon is nothing but episodes of both, and all CN Originals (with the exception of Network Darlings ' Ben 10, Chowder and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack) are scheduled after midnight; i.e. way past the bedtime of their target audience.
  • Nickelodeon loves SpongeBob SquarePants. The show runs at least eight times on an average weekday—it's the first thing they show in the morning and the last thing they show at night, before turning into Nick at Nite, and it's the only show that they run at all different hours of the day to get pre-schoolers, after-school kids, and evening teenager audiences. "Special" SpongeBob episodes are hyped up and promoted more often than the regular Nicktoons on the network. Some days, it gets more airtime than all the other Nicktoons still on Nickelodeon combined. Even repeats get more than the average that most kids' shows nowadays have. Don't believe me? Go on TV By The Numbers, look at the top cable ratings for the week and check out how many episodes will be there.
    • Mostly, it airs first thing in the morning, but sometimes, another show airs. For instance, a Team Umizoomi special aired on Martin Luther King Day 2012, and the Rugrats special "Babies in Toyland" was the first thing aired on December 25, 2011 (aka Christmas).
      • It is no longer aired anymore as the first thing in the morning, Winx Club now airs first.
    • Same thing with it being the last thing aired every day: sometimes, the last show aired is either iCarly, How to Rock, or Fred The Show, which usually occurs on Fridays and weekends.
    • Before SpongeBob really took off and practically ran with this trope, The Fairly OddParents was this for a while.
    • Dora the Explorer is the second most run cartoon on Nickelodeon, airing at least four times during the morning hours.
    • Before SpongeBob, it was Rugrats. The show was Uncanceled due to the ratings for the reruns being high and once the show was put back into production, it dominated most of the lineup and was running every day, at least five times a day. It was much like SpongeBob in regards to grabbing all sorts of audiences during the day. Plus, this also led to Nickelodeon using Klasky-Csupo (the studio behind Rugrats) to produce at least six new shows for the network, including the Rugrats Spin-Off All Grown Up! which was born from another over-hyped special that got Nickelodeon's highest ratings ever at almost twelve million viewers. Meanwhile, all the other Nicktoons were basically ignored or canceled outright.
    • On 7/18/10, an unannounced twelve hour marathon of SpongeBob plagued the channel, before an airing of Adventures In Babysitting, probablly to celebrate the show's 11th birthday (a day late).
    • On 7/29/10, of the 11 hours Nickelodeon has minus Nick at Nite and Nick Jr., nine hours were filled with SpongeBob and iCarly alone without any of their Nicktoons showing and only two other shows aired.
    • Same deal on 11/26/10, they played two episodes of The Penguins of Madagascar, then a six-hour SpongeBob marathon, followed by an iCarly marathon at 3, ending with iStart a Fan War at 7, and they wrapped it up with the premiere of the Victorious special, "Freak the Freak Out".
    • Later, with a schedule change on April 2011, SpongeBob got over 60 airings that week. It was even worse previously, where entire Saturdays and Sundays were filled entirely with the yellow sponge. iCarly took a close second, with Victorious and Tuff Puppy tied in third.
    • On Australia's Nickelodeon, until the mid-2010s, they had SpongeBob running from 12AM-6AM every night, for at least a year.
    • On Latin America's channel, almost all weekends are 48 hour marathons of either SpongeBob or iCarly.
    • There's more: The UK Nickelodeon had a whopping 502 hour marathon of Spongebob in Summer 2011, for the Clash of the Bottom competition, where kids had to vote for their favorite main character. To top that off, it was the second-longest TV show marathon of all time, only being beaten by Boomerang UK's Scooby Summer.
    • SpongeBob used to be adored by Nicktoons, until they forgot about it. Dragonball Z is why.
    • Here is a sample of an average day of Nickelodeon, which relates to the show we are talking about. On Christmas Day 2011, they played the Rugrats special "Babies in Toyland", then an episode of Fairly Oddparents, followed by a 3-hour Spongebob marathon, then a one-hour marathon of Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness, then an episode of Penguins of Madagascar, then after a few hours, they played a two hour Spongebob marathon a few hours later, making that 5 HOURS of Spongebob. In one day!
    • As of May 18, 2012, Nickelodeon can now be called "The Spongebob and Kung Fu Panda Legends of Awesomeness Network. Why is this? Because Kung Fu Panda plays for 2 1/2 hours on weekdays, making it the second-most run show on Nick.
  • Also, those marathon-special thingies must have meant that Nick had finally realized that Avatar: The Last Airbender is such a ratings-topper.
    • Its sister channel, Nicktoons, is also filled with Avatar now that the series has ended.
      • Also, The Legend of Korra is starting to become this. Like the Flapjack example, they play it multiple times each day, although there are only a few episodes.
  • If Family Guy isn't this for FOX, all of its animated shows except for King of the Hill are.
    • Family Guy also seems to air about 10 times a day on Adult Swim.
      • Four times a night on Monday through Thursday, two times on Friday and Sunday.
      • Three hours per night weekdays on TBS.
    • King of the Hill not adored? They gave it twelve seasons, which led it to suffer from Seasonal Rot around Season 7 or so.
      • FOX intended to cancel it early, it was only because of fan backlash it got an extra season. If you watched the network when new episodes of King of the Hill were being aired, said new episodes would receive very little promotion, while new episodes for The Simpsons and Family Guy would get hyped up. FOX probably would've cancelled the show several seasons earlier if they had the chance, but the good ratings and large, dedicated fanbase didn't justify it enough.
  • The Cleveland Show has certainly become a network favorite. Not to the same extent as The Simpsons or Family Guy, but it did receive two full seasons before airing a single episode, and it is more heavily promoted than a certain other MacFarlane show.
  • Chilean network Canal 13 just loves The Simpsons, to the point they will fill any spot they need with it. During the summer, the channel plays Simpsons blocks 2–3 hours long at morning, afternoon, and evening. This roughly sums up eight hours a day of a single show, never mind that they often skip episode credits to save time for adding an extra episode per block. In other words, they can air an entire season in a single day, the only reason they don't being that the episodes are randomly picked for the day. Sometimes, a small block of Futurama episodes airs before the morning Simpsons block. Still, it's not like they actually cut all the episodes in half just to accommodate for the prime time soaps. Oh wait, they totally did.
    • Some time ago, in 2009 actually, a new executive at Canal 13 (Vasco Moulián, if you're interested) developed a "flexible grid", where he would cut, extend, and change the programming according to the ratings—in real time, so if a show was running low on ratings it would be cut and replaced with something else on the spot, without a chance to tell anyone beforehand. And if there was any gap in the grid, we got The Simpsons. The backlash was so big that it cost him his job (despite getting Canal 13 from third to first place in viewership, make of that what you will). Afterward, the flexible grid was quietly put under the rug.
  • Outside of reality shows, Australia's Channel Ten also loves The Simpsons. It has pretty much always kept its daily 6:00 PM slot [4] since forever and will often show a couple of other episodes at other times. Mostly on Wednesdays where another two or three episodes might air after 7:30.
    • That is, until they decided to try a two and a half hour news block consisting of their aforementioned 5pm broadcast, followed by two new half-hour news based programs, and concluding with the already established 7pm Project. The Simpsons have been shunted onto Ten's secondary channel, 11, where it is shown at least twice during primetime, often being split/followed/alternated by episodes of Futurama as part of an 'animation fixation' block.
    • Channel 4 also has The Simpsons at 6:00 PM over here in the UK, when BBC 1 and ITV 1 are showing the news, BBC 2 is showing Eggheads (which also never seems to move) and Channel 5 is airing Home and Away.
  • Speaking of Home and Away, it and Neighbours are shown at least twice a day on Five, once at around lunchtime, and again (normally the same episodes of both) between 5:30 and 6:30.
  • FOX 8, the Australian Fox channel, shows The Simpsons several times a day and airs nothing but The Simpsons on Saturday and Sunday mornings. During the 2006 Commonwealth Games they showed nothing but the Simpsons for 10 DAYS! To add to that, they show up to 6 hour marathons all the time. School holidays, summer holidays, back to school, Christmas, Easter... pretty much any excuse to show Simpsons marathons.
  • Phineas and Ferb is quickly becoming incredibly overexposed on Disney Channel due to the fact that it has performed well over expectations and is gaining a massive fanbase. It's gotten to the point where Disney is comparing Phineas and Ferb to SpongeBob SquarePants.
  • The Canadian Expy of Cartoon Network; Teletoon literally airs THREE episodes of Johnny Test! In a row! Every. Single. Day. (Its seems they've also now replaced The Spectacular Spider-Man as a result... You Can Panic Now.)
  • The Nicktoons network, as of summer 2010, has Dragonball Z Kai and Avatar: The Last Airbender as their frequently airing shows. In July, they started airing on weekdays along with a third show requested by popular demand. And the Fandom Rejoiced.
    • Though they seem to be annoyed by marathons of the "original animated infomercials" NFL Rush Zone: Guardians of the Core" and Zevo-3.
    • They hardly even show Invader Zim like they did when it first premiered. They pretty much replaced it with massive, full 3 hour blocks of Zevo-3. The new, stupid 5 minute show "NFL Rush Zone: Guardians of the Core" has been invading schedules of Invader Zim, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and even their revered love child Zevo-3.
    • Let's not even start with Fanboy and Chum Chum. Massive blocks on both Nickelodeon and Nicktoons, It seemed for a while that you couldn't go a single day of the week without seeing at least three episodes of it.
      • Often the same three episodes. Again and again and again. Seriously, for a while you could only see three to five episodes, total, of Penguins Of Madagascar and Fanboy and Chum Chum, even with the knowledge that other episodes probably existed. They would play them in hour blocks, yet you never seemed to catch a new episode.
      • Currently[when?] T.U.F.F Puppy is getting the adoration. Same situation as Fanboy and Chum Chum, It's a new show that is being shoved down our throats, when SpongeBob has the day off.
    • Though it's been slowing down lately due to the lack of new episodes, Nicktoons did like airing Making Fiends multiple times a day a majority of the week. ChalkZone appears often early in the day.
    • As of this edit (11/9/11) Dragonball Z Kai is shown multiple times every day with flimsy excused for marathons. It's 11/11/11? They promise to show 11 hours of the show. It runs at least 4 episodes a day.
  • In Brazil, Disney XD loves The Fairly OddParents. Nickelodeon airs it as well... but Nick shows it twice Monday-Friday; XD, 4 times every day!
  • Adult Swim at one point began airing Squidbillies every weeknight at midnight while airing commercials stating it was getting low ratings and berating the viewers for not watching this awesome show.
    • Adult Swim absolutely loves FOX reruns, specifically King of the Hill, Family Guy, and American Dad. Now that Adult Swim starts at 9PM, weekdays will be these three shows for 6 of its 9 hours (including repeats). In one week, there is going to be 14 hours of King of the Hill, 12.5 hours of Family Guy, and 10 hours of American Dad for a total of 36.5 hours.
    • Adult Swim lost the rights to air Futurama at the end of 2007. In the days leading up to New Year's Day 2008, they showed every episode in existence at that point in a row. And It. Was. Awesome.
      • Speaking of Futurama, its definitly a network favorite for it's new home at Comedy Central. Not only does it get at least one airing every weekday at 1:30 (Along with the regular airing at 9:00 PM before their precious South Park), but it also got another 26 episode renewal bringing the show's run up to 2013 along with promotion and a nice 10:00 PM slot. They love the show just as much as Adult Swim did.
    • Adult Swim has also been playing The Oblongs pretty regularly, off and on, since 2002, sometimes even 4 or 5 days a week, despite the show only having 13 episodes.
  • Not even Italian networks are safe. Rai Gulp, born after the three main division of the national networks Rai dropped animation almost entirely,[5] and therefore dedicating its own entire schedule to fill in the blank, is partially guilty of this. Said schedule is made of shows that air at multiple times within the same day, but get removed from rotation after a while.[6] Some of these shows got properly Screwed by the Network,[7] while others (some of which actually produced by Rai, as a pre-airing Vanity Plate for them reads "RAI FICTION CARTOONS") are lucky enough to not only get re-airings before their temporary drop from the schedule, but get picked up again more often. However, the shining example is the Matt & Manson cartoon series, which has been removed from rotation only after a long while.
  • The Latin American Expy of Cartoon Network; there was a time where the only thing they aired was The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Mucha Lucha, and Ben 10, over and over and over again, for at least two months.
  • The now defunct Discovery Kids network, for its last few years essentially was Kenny the Shark and Tutenstein with the occasional Time Warp Trio and Prehistoric Planet.
  • The Discovery Kids network replacement, The Hub, while having a more balanced schedule than certain other networks, seems to be quite fond of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic and Transformers Prime. Considering the popularity of these shows. It might not be so bad.
    • On the subject of shows without a huge fanbase, most of the network's time not spent on ponies or Transformers is instead spent on Game Shows.
  • For those with small children - Caillou on the Sprout network. These are shown in 3-episode blocks 15 minutes in length, and only the first three seasons. This means there are only 25 blocks. Two blocks are shown in the morning, one in the evening (repeated 3 times in the overnight segment), and a full hour is shown from 1-2PM (3 blocks with commercials in between). This means Caillou is shown 9 times a day. There is a 100% turnover of episodes TWICE A WEEK.
  • Willas Wild Life and The Mysteries of Alfred Hedgehog are adored by qubo's digital channel.
  • Before it got changed to Disney XD, Toon Disney would air a marathon called Pumbaa Bowl every year. They aired episodes of Timon and Pumbaa for the whole day.
  • Toon Disney once aired a whole day-long marathon of Yin Yang Yo! that consisted of the same few episodes being played over and over, the entire day.
  • For the USA Disney Junior channel, it appears to be Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Not bad considering that the show is very popular with the channel's target demographic!. They also seem to like the new show Doc McStuffins.
  • Cookie Jar TV adores The Doodlebops and Busytown Mysteries, airing the shows for one hour each on Saturdays.
  1. ↑ The Syfy will advertise a show to death and even screw other shows in favor of it early in its run, but once the shiny new wears off, it will be killed at the height of its popularity for "not attracting the right demographic," regardless of which demographic that is.
  2. ↑ there actually are people who like them, which makes this more of a case of Broken Audience.
  3. ↑ The latest[when?] edition of Big Brother even had Padding and lasted roughly two more months than previous seasons. Go figure.
  4. ↑ This is when all the other networks are airing the nightly news. Ten air theirs at 5:00.
  5. ↑ (airing animated shows only during weekday mornings, that is, when most of the target audience can't watch television for obvious reasons)
  6. ↑ only to be picked up and aired again after another while
  7. ↑ Somewhat infamously, Code Lyoko and Avatar: The Last Airbender had their whole runs aired only once in a row without getting re-airings.
  8. ↑ only older seasons: another channel, Super!, airs more recent episodes
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