Programmes on air for contractual or other reasons

Inspired by the posts in BBC Three thread about programmes going out in the early morning after the channel has supposedly closed:

There's a channel Stateside that has gone through various rebrands over the years. CBN Satellite Service, CBN Family Channel, Family Channel, Fox Family, ABC Family, and most recently to Freeform - ditching the 'family' name that's been used since 1988. The channel was originally operated by televangelist Pat Robertson, before being sold onto Fox and then Disney.

A stipulation of the sale was that Robertson's religious programme, the '700 Club', must still be shown on the network twice daily - despite the channel change in style over the years away from family-oriented programming - which the network distances itself from and places disclaimers beforehand. There's more detail here: http://www.tvinsider.com/article/62330/as-abc-family-becomes-freeform-heres-why-its-still-stuck-with-the-700-club/

I was alerted on Twitter to a similar programme here in the UK (by nwtv2003 on here), Hour of Power which goes out on Sky1 at 6am on a Sunday and has apparently been a fixture of the channel for years (at least from before the 1989 launch of the Sky network), although in comparison to the 700 Club this isn't as much of a burden. I recorded an episode to see if there was any kind of surrounding presentation - there was no disclaimer or anything, but the ident beforehand had no announcement.

Is the Sky1 programme an example of keeping it on air because they're paying Sky, or because of a longstanding contractual agreement from the early days of Satellite Television/Sky Channel? And are there any other examples of keeping shows on air because they fulfil, say, an Ofcom quota or for financial reasons?

You'd think they'd try and get around it by closing "ABC Family" and launching "Freeform" as a new channel, if necessary running them side by side for a short period. I guess though the contract is so water tight they probably wouldn't get away with that.

Deal or No Deal is clearly being burnt off now by C4 - they haven't filmed for over a year but have a number of episodes stock piled, with the show moved to earlier in the afternoon after spectacularly losing it's audience in recent years. There doesn't look like any chance of it being renewed but C4 won't come out and say it's axed, something Noel has been a bit vocal about lately.

More on topic I guess the Sunday morning religious debate shows on BBC1 are some kind of requirement as otherwise they'd probably make do with just Songs of Praise. Similarly sign languaged shows are generally more about meeting OFCOM quotas than serving those viewers requiring the service.

And as it was BBC3 that inspired you to start this thread worth noting that their endless repeats of Little Britain and Two Pints of Lager were due to the terms of the licence requiring a large proportion of their programming (think it might have been as high as 90% originally) being made up of "BBC3" shows, so rather than being able to do something useful and repeat a BBC1/2 comedy airing at the time they just had to show Little Britain yet again.

Closing the channel would mean terminating the contracts they have with various cable and satellite providers and those cable providers might not accept the same carriage contacts as ABC Family and thus not carry the channel. They tried rebranding it as XYZ about a decade ago but couldn't because of the stipulation having family in the channel name but I guess they've managed to rebrand to Freeform but still stuck with The 100 Club.

The regional political programmes on ITV presumably are only there to fill a quota of regional time.

Yep - that kind of thing is a lot more complicated than doing the same thing over here. Same reason why a lot of new channels in the US are now just rebrands of previous ones (see OWN).

Well, the regional news itself is probably still there only because of their public service commitments!

Radio 1 used to play the Chris Moyles Podcast in the early hours of the morning. I think that was because they had a rule in the early days of podcasts about the amount of podcast content which hadn't been broadcast. By airing it they got round that

I guess there is the whole range of requirements with the Formula 1 contract, which obliges the broadcasters to take the World feed from the FIA ident until a certain point. I think the BBC had to show it on BBC1 as well.

I imagine other sports events might have requirements that broadcasters have to show the whole of a tournament rather than just the glamorous fixtures.

I think BBC News introduced an early morning showing of Click for the same reason. It kept getting dropped for breaking news, so technically shouldn't be put on iPlayer, so they play it out in a back half hour overnight.

It used to go out overnight anyway but the first showing was Saturday at 12:30 which kept getting bumped for breaking news or the BBC1 simulcast, so they added a 01:30 showing. That still gets bumped occasionally.

The Moyles Podcast was probably used as cheap filler more than anything.

Yes there is a limited amount of time they can use their own cameras. They once had to ask special permission to break away from world feed pictures during a particularly long red flagged race, as they were getting frustrated with talking over pictures of rain and puddles, and wanted to run recorded items so the presenters could take a break.

Champions League coverage has to include the theme tune, as does the Rugby World Cup, though those are the exceptions rather than the rule.

On the sport theme though and has the Superbowl half time show been broadcast from the start. I'd assume it originated as something for the crowd whilst the TV audience got ads and analysis.