Enough with the repeats, SABC

Pity it isn’t as simple as that.

Gone are the days when you could sit down in the evening and watch an episode of a show that wasn’t filmed in the mid, to late 80s or early 90s. That is of course unless you’re a soapy junkie. Then there is unlimited content for you although it too includes a number of ancient reruns like Konings (1994).

SABC 1 offers Generations, Tempy Pushas or Zone 14. SABC2 brings you 7de Laan or Muvhango and on SABC 3 you can catch Generations, Isidingo, High Rollers, and in case you missed it on SABC 2 you can watch 7de Laan as well.

What? You missed an episode of Days of our Lives? God forbid! Not to worry, you can watch all the episodes that were screened throughout the week in a mammoth omnibus on Saturday. Similarly you can catch up on Isidingo or The Bold and the Beautiful on Sunday.

If you’d like to see something other than a soapie you’ll generally have to wait till 10pm or later when you can then catch Without A Trace, Monk, The Client List or an old episode of Law and Order.

The broadcaster should just re-brand themselves as Repeats Are Us. Not only are they re-screening all their archived series like Hawaii Five-O (1968), Chips (1977), Airwolf (1984) and MacGyver (1985) but they are repeating movies across all three channels. Multiple times! A few weeks ago I was having a quiet night in and thought I’d check what movies were playing. I packed up laughing when I discovered I could watch Charlie St Cloud on either SABC 1 or SABC 3. At exactly the same time!

But my absolute favourite at the moment is the promo they keep flighting saying they’re bringing you double the viewing pleasure by screening Season 2 of Human Target on Monday nights and then Season 1 on Wednesday nights. The irony is that they don’t even get why this is a problem.

Perhaps they should have stuck with SABC 3’s former slogan “Quality Shows” because their quality does in deed show.