> <i>Carl Meredith is one local viewer upset about Ovation’s removal from his Time Warner lineup. Meredith and his wife, who live near Clayton, are big fans of Ovation’s reruns of the original British version of “Antiques Roadshow.” Meredith said he had his DVR set to record the episodes during the day, and the couple would watch them together at night. Now, he gets a blue screen telling him Time Warner Cable no longer carries Ovation.</i><p>That's a rather left-field choice of show to enjoy, and in most of these discussions reruns (especially esoteric ones) don't get a lot of focus. Pundits tend to focus on the newest episode of, say, <i>Homeland</i> as the item worth buying. The Merediths show us that there is more to that puzzle.<p>The à la carte selection of and payment for individual shows, as opposed to individual channels, may have some merit after all; if you read between the lines, they don't want Ovation. They want reruns of British <i>Antiques Roadshow</i>, and Ovation just happened to have them. This couple is already down the road toward a different model, too, since they utilize their DVR to time-shift the episodes anyway.<p>The downside to shifting to paying for shows is (the often useful) local network affiliates, live sports programming, real-time news, and so forth, which are problems yet to be solved. Basically, anything live. I think the generation that's in their 20s and 30s now, though, is more palatable to this kind of model, and we're very likely on the way.<p>----<p>Other point I'd like to make here is that British <i>Antiques Roadshow</i> is produced by the BBC, who haven't quite figured out the United States yet. Different legal systems force them to make real bummers, like rescoring <i>Top Gear</i> since they have a very liberal licence to use popular music in the UK and America is a very different picture. In many <i>Top Gear</i> films, the music is half of the equation[1] and its replacement with stock light rock jams is a real shame. Heard some of that in the <i>Best of Top Gear</i> edits that BBC America just aired. That's also probably why they have to be really aggressive on YouTube, and a lot of the unofficial clips of <i>Top Gear</i> on YouTube have been disappearing, replaced by official edits following the same rules.<p>A lot of Americans, myself included, are chomping at the bit for <i>Top Gear</i> but the BBC finds itself having to edit it to remove British-specific jokes (which I disagree with) or rescoring as mentioned above (which is just unfortunate). They're pretty lax on <i>QI</i> on YouTube, though, which is just great; I've seen all of <i>QI XL</i> Series J so far, not far behind Britain.<p>[1]: Example from last series, brilliantly written, shot, edited, and scored: <a href="http://vimeo.com/40226173" rel="nofollow">http://vimeo.com/40226173</a>