By Amarachi Okeh
I love weddings. Weddings are supposed to be one of the happiest days in a lifetime of a new couple and I look forward to a fairy tale wedding even though they are rare.
One of the most glamourous wedding events in recent times was the wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Bankole Wellington.
We all looked forward to this occasion because besides being a fan of the Wellingtons, Banky and his beautiful bride, Adesua are a symbol of class and panache.
But again, not everyone had the opportunity to get an invite to this near fairy tale wedding. Just last week though, I got a text message from a friend that the #BAAD 2017 wedding (that was what the couple hash tagged their wedding) will be aired on DStv on Saturday.
I was so excited but then again my excitement quickly faded when I remembered that I would not be home to watch the show as I had an important assignment at work and even worse, I couldn’t for now afford one of those decoders that gave you access to record programmes.
Then again I was so excited when the following day, Sunday, the same wedding programme I missed was repeated on AfricaMagic channel 151.
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Wow! it was so exciting; the two-hour programme got me glued to my seat from start to finish. I was never a fan of repeats on TV.
However, for those of us with tight schedules who also can’t afford to get a decoder that can record TV programmes, we are now fans of programmes repeats.
I found out recently that repeats are part of the pay TV programming structure around the world and that the reason programmes are repeated are twofold or even more.
The first and more popular reason is to increase the opportunity for more people to catch programmes they may have missed on its first airing.
Sometimes a movie is shown at night on a certain day, then at daytime the next day or a few days later as occurred with the AfricaMagic airing of The Wellingtons wedding.
Another reason repeats happen is sometimes directed by the content owner. When entering into a contract to lease or purchase content, the content owner has the right to stipulate that the programme is shown a certain number of times, what time of the day and so on.
Additionally, I recently read that there are only about 600 new movies produced annually. If this is true, it means that television broadcast times for these movies will be just 1200 hours of movies and if a single channel broadcasting 24 hours a day needs 8760 hours of content annually, it’s a clear indication that programme repeats cannot be ruled out as you only have so many movie hours to fit in.
Until I can afford a decoder that records TV programmes like the DStv Explora, I beg DStv to help repeat interesting programmes that I missed out on as I have become an advocate of TV programme repeats
