Originally Posted by Steve Williams:
“Yes, it is just Watch under a new name.
I'm not sure why this has become a big issue, really. When UK Gold was launched back in the nineties, they made it clear that although they had the rights to the BBC archive, the BBC always had first dibs on everything from it. That remains the case with the UKTV portfolio, they have repeat rights to most BBC programmes but the controllers of BBC1, BBC2 and BBC4 have priority access of it.
The fact is that the 'stEnders repeat on BBC3 is ending, because BBC3 is going online. They don't want to show 'stEnders repeats on BBC1, BBC2 or BBC4, so therefore that's the end of the repeat on the BBC. Ergo any other channel could buy the rights to show repeats, and they have done. The only difference between this and the umpteen other BBC shows on the UKTV channels is that they're repeating them on the same day. If in the future they want to show a repeat on BBC1 or BBC2 again, they'll presumably do so and W will stop showing it then.
But they've not "sold" the BBC3 repeat to UKTV, the Beeb have decided to stop showing a repeat and another channel has picked it up.”
I just can't understand why though. It's not like eastenders was the only programme that was repeated on the bbc if that was case fair enough, but half the shows these days get a same week repeat ?
I can understand there wasn't anywhere they could of probably shown it at a decent time the same night but a repeat the following day late afternoon on bbc2 maybe where it is all repeats anyway so it wouldn't of been disrupting anything ?