Marathons for TV

Especially around this part of the year, we see a lot of marathons for various movies and to a lesser extent, television shows that air for nonstop hours. It's quick ad it's a ratings grabber for a network who is putting up with more than five hours worth of  the same thing over and over. When you look at Christmas, it's clear a lot of channels do it.

It all starts with A Christmas Story. The film started to get attraction with airings during the 90s. Then in 1997, TNT started the 24 hour marathon of the film. That gets ratings, but with that mind, the landscape has changed a bit from what it was 21 years ago. Now, it's on both TNT and TBS, as a lot of networks will lump one program onto multiple channels. Turner and Viacom do this a lot. Anyway, other networks have done marathons similar to Christmas Story. FX has done it multiple movies. So has AMC, Freeform. The list goes on.

Outside of Christmas, there might be something around Thanksgiving or July 4th for a few networks. AMC is the only one now these days that airs The Godfather trilogy, and they do that around Thanksgiving just about every year. They are very long movies, but they are also beloved (the third not so much, but still) and it's something that the network can get ratings on due to rare airings and maybe not finding it on DVD or Blu-Ray.

Television shows have marathons more than movies. Ion does this a lot with various crime shows for a specific day. USA is very guilty of this with the constant marathons of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and NCIS. The way they treat other syndicated shows they have like Modern Family is downright embarrassing. But unfortunately, they get ratings, and other shows don't get the special treatment as the two. A shame, really. You don't see it with comedy shows. WGN is like this a little bit with M*A*S*H and Last Man Standing, but it's not too bad compared to dramas. Comedy Central loves The Office quite a bit, but it's usually weekends if they pick the show that they air it constantly during a part of the day.

These shows cost money to get and if costs weren't a factor, I would spice it up a bit with various shows instead of four hour airings of certain shows. For holidays, grin and bear it. It's not the worst thing in the world, even though it gets repetitive sometimes. For television shows, not much you can do. Complaining to the networks will not help you at all.