As we've said many times when looking at regular season real estate, the percentages stay surprisingly steady each year. The percentage of big four primetime real estate dedicated to original series has almost always been somewhere in the low sixties. Just a spike to 66% in 2014-15 made it one of the biggest departures in the era. But the summer has had much more flexibility. Once known as a wasteland of repeats, recent summers have seen original/repeat percentages changing much more drastically. Here's a look at broad programming categories in the summer.
Big Four Real Estate in the Summer
| Year | Originals | Reruns | Movies | Sports | Specials |
| 2002 | 24% | 47% | 17% | 6% | 6% |
| 2003 | 29% | 47% | 11% | 7% | 6% |
| 2004 | 27% | 47% | 10% | 11% | 5% |
| 2005 | 24% | 56% | 11% | 6% | 3% |
| 2006 | 28% | 54% | 7% | 8% | 3% |
| 2007 | 28% | 57% | 5% | 6% | 4% |
| 2008 | 34% | 45% | 6% | 10% | 5% |
| 2009 | 38% | 48% | 4% | 6% | 4% |
| 2010 | 37% | 52% | 2% | 7% | 2% |
| 2011 | 34% | 55% | 2% | 7% | 3% |
| 2012 | 32% | 49% | 1% | 13% | 4% |
| 2013 | 37% | 50% | 1% | 9% | 3% |
| 2014 | 44% | 44% | 0% | 9% | 3% |
In terms of original volume, this is very different from the mostly static regular season, as the percentage of originals has nearly doubled from 2001-02 to 2013-14! In terms of repeats, like on the regular season page it's useful to view reruns and movies in tandem as a "cheap filler" category. For most of the era, the percentage of repeats was steady if not increasing, but that's because the networks were furiously decreasing their dependence on movies. Now that movies are a non-factor, any further original programming means series repeats will be the casualty.
One thing worth noting here is that the original percentage hasn't gradually increased every year; instead, there have been long stretches of steadiness, with a couple periods of rapid increase, like 2008-09 as well as last summer. It's almost like each network has its own individual "come to Jesus" moment and suddenly ramps up summer programming to a huge degree. To investigate this further, here's an original breakdown by network.
Original Series Real Estate in the Summer By Network
| Year | ABC | CBS | NBC | Fox |
| 2002 | 21% | 15% | 30% | 34% |
| 2003 | 18% | 22% | 39% | 43% |
| 2004 | 23% | 17% | 34% | 39% |
| 2005 | 20% | 20% | 28% | 30% |
| 2006 | 22% | 19% | 35% | 38% |
| 2007 | 31% | 17% | 25% | 47% |
| 2008 | 32% | 19% | 46% | 43% |
| 2009 | 47% | 17% | 48% | 40% |
| 2010 | 44% | 17% | 44% | 47% |
| 2011 | 43% | 17% | 41% | 35% |
| 2012 | 40% | 15% | 38% | 39% |
| 2013 | 50% | 19% | 47% | 32% |
| 2014 | 57% | 26% | 51% | 43% |
ABC: They made their first big uptick in 2007, even though none of it really succeeded. But after two big successes the next summer with Wipeout and The Bachelorette, they had stuff to build around and ramped up big again in 2009.
NBC: NBC's big uptick year was 2008. This was partly about the downtrodden network no longer really having much from the regular season worth repeating, and part about some of the writer's strike filler (like Deal or No Deal and American Gladiators) getting tried in the summer. In '07, it was pretty much just America's Got Talent and Last Comic Standing surrounded by repeats, but they've surrounded those shows with much more filler originals since then.
Fox: Though I think they have invested more in summer programming, these numbers say they're by far the steadiest network over the whole 14-year era. It's worth keeping in mind that Fox used to roll out its fall lineup much earlier in the summer, so many weeks of those fall shows got counted in these numbers.
CBS: They were really the last holdout here, as they tended to have the best-repeating regular season series. They could just throw on Big Brother and repeats and call it a day for pretty much the whole era. But even their repeats had to reach the tipping point eventually, and the huge success of Under the Dome in 2013 didn't hurt, so they had a big surge in 2014.
By the way, I didn't include the CW since they're not a part of the full big four averages, but they usually have had many more repeats/fewer originals than anyone other than CBS. Particularly amusing was the summer of 2011, in which they went a full 16 weeks (May 23 thru September 9) without airing a single original program! Since that debacle, they've gotten back up into the 20s original percentage-wise.
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