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Q: It seems like none of the stations show the old seasons of "Law & Order" — they only show Season 13 and on. What's going on?

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Author: 
Adam Thomlison / TV Media

It seems that the rights owners (there are more of them than you'd think) are only selling the reruns in packages, and the only ones for sale right now are for seasons 13 to 20 (the latter being the final season).

It's not just the traditional TV stations that are in this boat; it's also true for those streaming the classic NBC procedural show online. The reason seems to be, basically, that "Law & Order" is a victim of its own success — there's just too much to buy all at once. 

Even Peacock, the digital streaming service created specifically by NBCUniversal to make NBC shows available online, only has Season 13 onward. That seems particularly hard to understand, until you realize that NBC's not just negotiating with itself to get the rights.

Dick Wolf, who created "Law & Order," its many spinoffs and about a million other procedural shows, retains a stake in the show, and so he's at the table when these decisions are made. So, even NBC has to pay up when it wants to air an episode of "Law & Order" — and there are a lot of episodes.

"The series has so many episodes that the show would be pretty expensive to license in its entirety," an anonymous insider told Vulture.com.

There's also the fact that "Law & Order" is a rare long-running series that didn't really do any overarching plots. No will-they-won't-they relationships, no season-long manhunts — pretty well all 400-plus episodes of the show stand alone, so viewers who jump into the show at Season 13 aren't missing any key information from the previous 12.

 

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