Duncan's Law of Diminishingly Random TV Scheduling.

My law states that every time you tune in to watch a TV show you like that's been around for a while, you're more likely to see an episode that you have seen many, many times rather than one that you have seen very few times.

For example. Bravo are showing re-runs of The West Wing. Seasons 2 in the morning, Season 4 in the evening.

You'd think that I would get to see a good variety of the 44 episodes in those two seasons. But no. Instead I see the same six or seven episodes over and over again.

The same can be said of Friends. There's over 150 episodes to possibly see and yet...I still get the same eight. Seinfeld, ditto. King of the Hill, The Simpsons, also true. Angel, ST:TNG, CSI...yep...

I think it works like this:

You have a number of possible episodes to sit and watch. Some you have seen and some you haven't and there's the one you're currently watching. So when you sit and watch an episode, instead of removing that episode from the field of potential next episodes, a *different* episode is removed and the one you just saw is re-included in the field of potential next episodes. So, the more you watch, the greater the opportunity to see the one you just saw is.

If anyone has a similar experience, can write the formula or suggest a remedy for this phenomenon, please tell me.