Im thinking about in all the ways even streaming now. Im thinking before streaming the stooges would be a good contender. Was shown in movied theaters and had reruns going all the time on so many different channels. Its a wonder life used to be spammed in november and december before the ip was taken back out of public domain.
EDITING. Im thinking more about the same thing being rebroadcast I think which is why I was thinking its a wonderful life to. So like there are only so many stooges and they get replayed a lot as opposed to like the simpsons or doctor who running for a whole bunch of seasons.
Wouldn’t need to rerun. There was an interview with Bryan Cranston about his time on soap operas and he said they repeat the same lines every couple episodes in slightly different ways to catch people up who missed episodes. And with 200 episodes a year, that is a lot of watch time.
I read something similar for Law g Order actually.
They repeat the premise of the episode so often that you can really just jump in at any point in the episode and be caught up within minutes.