It is hard to understand why so many people are angered at the BBC's decision to cut its cloth by showing more repeats.
The Beeb has a budget deficit of £2 billion, which is a little more than Lord Ashcroft pumps into Tory constituency parties, and a little less than the escalating costs of the London Olympics.
The corporation has announced it will commission 10 per cent fewer programmes in order to save money, and will fill the hole in its schedules with endless re-runs, and re-re-runs, of old shows.
What's the problem? It's ruddy brilliant! Everybody knows TV shows today are rubbish. BBC 1's current ratings-grabbing midweek drama is Waterloo Road, which everyone knows is a pale imitation of Grange Hill in its glorious, gritty late-70s/early 80s heyday. Waterloo Road's watered down storylines about child brides and knife-crime are nothing compared with the hard-edged drama of Tucker worrying about getting a right old hiding from his mum for ripping his school jumper.
With the exception of adult snogging (where Waterloo Road wins hands down), Grange Hill had it all. Many people would happily watch re-runs of the early series, and muse over the psychological motivation of Zammo and the sexual ambiguity of Mr Bronson.
Today's sit-coms are dire, too, providing lame laughs for the dim-witted. Can After You've Gone (I had to check its name) hold a candle to The Good Life? Can . err . look, I can't even think of another decent comedy to hit with a Fawlty Towers comparison. The Office is just the exception that proves the rule.
So hats off to BBC DG Mark Thompson and BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons for plunging us back into a perpetual programming Groundhog Day.
And brace yourself: here's something of a TV scoop. This column can exclusively reveal BBC 1's highlights package for Christmas Day this year.
The extravaganza will include a re-run of the Morecambe and Wise 1977 Christmas show, in which Angela Ripon flashes her pegs and Eddie "Up-and-Under" Waring vaults over gym equipment dressed as a sailor.
There will be a repeat of a 1963 Blue Peter special, featuring Valerie Singleton teaching a sealion Esperanto.
Sporting treats will include a repeat of Olympic hurdler David Hemery winning the first British Superstars tournament in 1973.
Tradition won't be thrown out the window. The BBC will broadcast the Queen's Christmas message from 1959, which was in fact a pre-recorded radio message. Her Majesty was pregnant with Prince Andrew at the time and it was deemed unsightly to have ladies in an "indisposed" situation on the goggle box.
And for the Queen, no expense has been spared - it's Christmas, after all. Instead of a blank screen for the televised "radio message," the monarch's message will relayed over the classic Test Card F, showing the girl with blonde hair and Alice-band playing noughts and crosses with a drug-addled stuffed clown.
One can only hope ITV follows the BBC's inspirational lead and implements its own policy of constant re-runs.
This already happens on ITV4, but there is a strong argument for booting Ant and Dec into touch and making the past mainstream on ITV1.
For it is ITV that had the cream of testosterone-pumped police dramas, such as The Sweeney and The Professionals. Viewing the unreconstructed behaviour of our spam-sandwich eating cop heroes - DI Jack Regan, DS George Carter, and Bodie and Doyle - would be invaluable for the new generation of child snoops the Government wants to create in Birmingham as part of its "community empowerment" agenda. (And no, I'm not making the last bit up.)
These so-called junior wardens will be recruited to crack down on yobbos and given training in how to say: "Umm, I'm telling on you."
Why stop there?
Let's tell the young Plods how policing used to work and show them the old-school law enforcement culture celebrated in the new Sweeney era of re-run broadcasting.
Phrases such as "Shut it!", "Sod it!", "Button it!" and "Get your trousers on, Tinkerbell - you're nicked!" will soon be echoing around our housing estates once again.