Why isn't The Monkees TV show in syndication anymore?

That is a VERY good point Andy. I assume the only exception would be the classic 39 Honeymooners which always had a heavy run although those are fleshed out more now with the 'lost episodes' being in the package.

 

Both of them have done playboy shoots and they turned out rather well,

 

And I thought I'd see that Only In My Dreams. I should probably only check out those issues when I Think I'm Alone, Now...

 

Sort of reviving this thread by saying that "The Monkees" series has recently been played on the IFC channel on satellite/cable... It was shown on weekends, but now it looks like "That 70s Show" has taken over its place...

 

They only did 58 episodes. That is hard to syndicate for too long. Just not enough episodes. They should have done a third season, which would have been 26 more episodes. Then they would have had 84 episodes to syndicate.

 

That's still enough to do weekly syndication, though.

 

With 58 episodes, they could easily do daily weekday episodes... They'd get close to three months of repeats before having to start over... (That's figuring it at 5 days a week w/ 4 weeks per month.)

 

Thing is it's probably one of those syndicated shows that when you catch it on TV over the years it's always the same episode...

 

I typed "Monkees" in the search of my cable and they have episodes this weekend on "Family Network"...which mainly has 1970s shows like Barney Miller, All in the Family, Charlie's Angels, Benson along with 1960s Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie.

 

FamilyNet being the network and it is owned by Rural Media Group (the owners of RFD-TV) and the programming is exclusively drawn from shows that Sony owns the syndication rights to.

 

Wouldn't mind a Monkees video/hits ..clips from their tv show on blu~ray.

 

In fact, the prints that FamilyNet uses are the same syndication prints that Nickelodeon aired back in the 1980s.

 

I agree with others that the small number of total episodes is a reason that The Monkees isn't being rerun much. If I remember correctly you need at least 60 episodes for a rerun package (giving you 12 weeks when you rerun 5 episodes a week).

A related example of this is Robotech. The Japanese original series (called Macross) had only 36 episodes. In order to get it shown in the U. S. they took two unrelated series of 18 episodes each and via editing and dubbing they merged the three series into one for a total of 72 episodes. I've compared what was done with Robotech would be like merging Star Trek, Space 1999, and Buck Rogers In The 25th Century into one series.

I think another factor that works against rerunning older series is the availability of affordable box sets. The people who used to watch reruns now can just buy the entire series and watch it at their leisure, reducing the number of people who would watch it on television. Plus, many series that were expensive during their first release are no much more affordable (I've seen some series that I estimate are now about 1/2 to a 1/3 of the first-release price).

Another factor that pushes people away from watching reruns is the editing that occurs. As an example, I've watched some Star Trek - The Next Generation episodes on BBC America and I've noticed that some of the scenes have been removed. As an example, I recently watched the episode "Q Who" (which formally introduced The Borg), the final scene between Picard and Guinan was missing.

 

I don't understand why Sony wants the rights if they aren't going to use them.

 

I've read a few pages of this thread. It's interesting to read all the people saying they love the music but can't watch the TV show. IMHO,I love a lot of Monkees music, but there is no question that the Monkees' greatest achievement was in fact the TV show.

The show is a surprisingly successful attempt to update the Marx Bros for a TV format. Refining the quick cut techniques that had been pioneered by Richard Lester and the surrealistic style of Ernie Kovacs, the show helped create a new comedy style, fast and self-aware, that would find ratings gold with Laugh-In a year or so later.

One thing that has killed appreciation of the Monkees is that its style went out of fashion. Just a few years later All In The Family would return sitcoms to the slow-paced literalness of the theatre stage.Curiously, while just about everything else in film and pop culture speeded up, comedy for some reason slowed down.

 

......Antenna TV has taken The Monkees off their weekend schedule at this point in time..

 

Sony has the rights to syndicate the show while Rhino has the masters. Sony only has syndication prints these days.

 

But whether or not the show airs in syndication is dependant upon Sony. It's their decision and supposedly they have a very high syndication fee tacked on to the show.

 

Well, this sounds like an interesting theory, but when I tried to see if there was some hidden comedy gold in the TV series, I was unable to find any. Yes, it may have been fast paced, but it is also not funny. By the way, the show ran on a European TV channel called arte maybe 20 years ago. It was unwatchable for me back then. The music is a different story.

 

Yes they do but FamilyNet is willing to pay the fee, obviously.

 

The TV show has one of my all time favorite moments in TV comedy (unfortunately I don't recall the specific episode, only the gag itself).

The boys are standing around arguing about whatever the dilemma of the week is. Suddenly, Mickey gets a brainstorm -- "I know how to solve this!". He walks away from the others, off the set, and we see cameramen, technicians, and all the show's behind the scene's trappings. The camera follows Mickey as he walks out of the soundstage and into an office building, where he finally stops in front of a door reading "WRITER'S ROOM". He opens the door and tells the people inside the episode's plot and that the Monkees need help to solve the big problem.

Then we see inside the writer's room -- it's filled with Chinese coolies, dressed like it's 1870. One of the Chinese types up something and hands it to Mickey. Mickey reads it and tells them, "This is great guys -- it'll solve everything!". He walks away from the office, out of the building, back to the soundstage, and once again past all the technicians, cables, and finally the camera. He returns to his original position in the scene, and looks at the paper the writer gave him. "This'll never work" he says, "those guys sure are overpaid". He crumples up the paper and throws it away, then proceeds to play the scene with the others as if nothing happened.

 

Hmmmm.

 

It's not a bad idea, but I thought something like that would already exist in the states. You'd be spending jack all on producing any new content, so I'm not sure as to why no ones done this?

 

I'm guessing that it was proposed, but the powers that be decided that a channel like this would have too narrow and audience and it wouldn't be able to sustain itself. For similar reasons, MTV dropped most of their music programming, Bravo airs reality shows instead of the arts, and even Discovery has reality shows. It makes no sense to me, but I understand why it happens.

 

Maybe I need to reiterate this...

You guys seriously need to somehow try to look at these old shows through the eyes of someone about my age (29..for a bit more..!)
A lot of these really old time shows are simply of their time, and hold nearly zero appeal for someone my age, LET ALONE a teenager of today.

Look at what a kid or teen has as competition today, they simply do not care about ancient shows.
I get that there could be nostalgic value for sure, but to gain a new audience....hardly.

There are a few 60's shows I truly like, but they are not so much "timeless", but simply are still watchable and appealing.

Twilight zone.
Leave it to Beaver
Andy Griffith (mostly)