I basically only watch TV from my DVR. So yes, for me, having to sift through the recorded "new" episodes only to think "oh I remember this one" is annoying. Worse, they are doing it on purpose to artificially inflate their ratings and ad revenue.

"Clip show" episodes have been a cheap trick used by TV fiction for ages. Now they are doing it on the news? I guess it was inevitable that someone would eventually put the concepts together.

60 minutes has always had a "season" and showed reruns during the summer.

For someone who hates regulation... Something entertainment that isn't even a matter of psychological manipulation... needs regulation? Does that mean this guy only wants to regulate things which don't actively reinforce social structures?

Or is this actually bait?

Best course of action is for GP to step away from the television for a while.

Or maybe the best course of action for HNers is to be far less judgmental and self-centered, and offer something other than snark in their comments. I don't spend a great deal of time watching TV, and when I do it is mostly DVR'd content. To have old episodes marked as new doesn't make a huge difference to one viewer - it's an annoyance that costs me a bit of time. But for the people behind this, across millions of viewers also experiencing the same thing, it makes a very large difference in terms of inflated viewership. That's a large-scale, significant fraud, likely involving millions of hours of watch time and millions of dollars in fraudulently generated ad revenue. THAT is why maybe someone like the FCC should take a look at the issue.

Even if they’re ‘tricking’ people into watching a re-run (seems a silly thing to say to me) then it’s still a view isn’t it? People are still watching the adverts so why would the advertisers care? The viewer numbers aren’t wrong.