What is "repurposing"

n. The act by which something is repurposed. vb. (present participle of repurpose English)

Repurposing is the process by which an object with one use value is transformed or redeployed as an object with an alternative use value. This kind of activity is as old as human civilization, with many contemporary scholars investigating that way that different societies re-appropriate the artifacts of older cultures in new and creative ways. More recently, repurposing has been celebrated by 21st century hobbyists and arts-and-crafts organizations such as Instructables and other Maker culture communities as a means of creatively responding to the ecological and economic crises of the 21st century. Recent scholarship has attempted to relate these activities to American left- and right- libertarianism.

Repurposing is the use of a tool being re-channeled into being another tool, usually for a purpose unintended by the original tool-maker. Typically, repurposing is done using items usually considered to be junk, garbage, or obsolete. A good example of this would be the Earthship style of house, that uses tires as insulating walls and bottles as glass walls. Reuse is not limited to repeated uses for the same purpose. Examples of repurposing include using tires as boat fenders and steel drums or plastic drums as feeding troughs and/or composting bins. Incinerator and power plant exhaust stack fly-ash is used extensively as an additive to concrete, providing increased strength. This type of reuse can sometimes make use of items which are no longer usable for their original purposes, for example using worn-out clothes as rags.

Not all repurposing is necessarily environmentally friendly, take for instance the idea of repurposing older work trucks for businesses in their infancy, in which their poor fuel economy can negate long term benefits since greater spending of money for fuel, and more fumes output to the sky can prove to be environmentally unfriendly, in which repurposing vehicles for electric car conversion can be the recommended alternative to that, though its cost can be negligible upfront.

Repurposing refers to a television industry practice in which content providers negotiate deals that allow a series to earn additional revenue during its original run. This is made possible by airing the series multiple times on the broadcast network which licensed it, or airing it concurrently on a cable network. As a result, the window between original run and syndication is shortened dramatically. Repurposing was the first significant adaptation of industry distribution practice since the advent of cable.

Repurposing shortened the window to a matter of days between original run and syndication. Broadcast and cable developed repurposing pacts usually produced by studios also owned by broadcast networks or its conglomerate. Cable programmers hoped to increase audiences and awareness.

An early example of repurposing is the financing deal made between NBC and the United States cable channel, giving USA rights to air “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” within two weeks of its broadcast airing.

Increases in license payments decreases initial risk for production companies by supplying additional revenue that helps to finance expensive projects. However, abandoning traditional conventions of exclusivity rights to a series may also lead to diminished profits due to over-saturation of the market. Nonetheless, media analysts have produced data that suggests series availability in any form of syndication negatively affects the audience size of the original run airing.

Repurposing has caused concern for many industry professionals, due to the role of conglomerated ownership and deregulatory policies of eliminating Financial Interest and Syndication Rules (fin-syn). Yet “double-runs” of a series on its own network has become a common practice, especially for cable networks, and is considered a significant change in the established procedures of broadcasters.

Once the television and broadcasting companies adapted to cable, it was said that the practice of original run repurposing marked the first significant adjustment to distribution practices beginning in 1999. Some will argue that the role of conglomerated ownership actually caused concern as networks announced repurposing arrangements that actually favored products from commonly owned studios.