Q: I can remember as a child that a new TV season began in the fall and went until spring. Each week, there would be a new episode until the end of the season, and reruns would air all summer long. It seems these days that a "new season" consists of a handful of new shows followed by reruns for a few weeks and then one or two "new" episodes followed by more reruns.

Why are there so many reruns during a "new season," and why don't the networks program the way that they used to?

A It's time to play another round of TV math, which puts revisionist TV history in its place.

In general, the networks order the same number of episodes of a TV show per season now as they did in 1970. That's 22 episodes. Some series have more (usually 26 at the most), and some first-season shows today have fewer as networks take a page from shorter cable runs (often 13 episodes). But established series in 1970 and in 2012 generally run about 22 episodes.

When you have 22 episodes and the TV season runs from late September to late May -- about 34 weeks -- there are bound to be 12 weeks of reruns or pre-emptions. Those usually won't happen in September, October or the sweeps months of November, February or May. That means all of those in-season reruns have to be squeezed into December, January, March and April.

One way networks have changed is that today they are more likely to remove a show from the schedule for a few weeks -- as Fox is doing with "Glee" this month and part of April -- than air reruns, because reruns increasingly get ratings that are just too low to be managed.

'NYPD Blue' is hard to see nowQ: Why are there no reruns of "NYPD Blue"? It was a great series, and I am sure I missed a lot of episodes.

A A new network called NuvoTV (available in the Twin Cities only on Dish Network) carries "NYPD Blue" on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 8 and 11 p.m. "NYPD Blue" was carried on a larger cable network closer to when it was in production, but the show has been out of production for seven years.

Super Bowl really did set a recordQ: I heard a report that Super Bowl XLVI achieved a slightly lower TV audience rating than last year's game of Steelers vs. Packers. Later, NBC thanked viewers for making this year's telecast the "most watched" program in history. Which is correct?

A Both were correct at the time they were reported. The initial report was based on preliminary Nielsen ratings. The second report is the final report, which can vary from the preliminary ratings report; in this one, the ratings went up enough to set a new record.