BBC America Re-airing Old Episodes

I have no idea which DVD this was on, but it was mentioned on one of the bonus features, I'm certain. Basically, when the earlier episodes were on, any actor who worked on TV had to be a member of equity. The rules of equity at the time meant that any actor had to be paid for repeat performances, just as they would if they were doing multiple shows on the stage. It was a way of safeguarding their pockets and making sure their work wasn't repeated without them getting paid for it. As this was part of the contracts of all actors appearing in the show and the BBC didn't want to fork out lots of money in residuals, repeats of stories from the 60s are very rare. Equity changed its rules sometime in the 70s which means repeating later stories was a lot less costly. I've no idea of the costs though as I believe they weren't set in stone but instead negotiated by the managers of the actors, or equity if they were not represented. Elisabeth Sladen mentions (a lot!) on the DVDs how her manager negotiated badly on her behalf and so she gets hardly anything from the repeats or DVD sales

I seem to remember something about 3 repeats. I'm not sure if the episodes could be repeated three times before royalties had to be made, or the BBC made it a rule to not repeat more than three times, perhaps. Something like that, I can't remember for certain, but there was something about 3 repeats in there. And basically, because nobody expected home video, the BBC have a loophole when it comes to selling VHS and DVD as it wasn't ever negotiated and isn't classed as a repeat airing. In terms of acting, only the 'stars' (Doctors and companions, I believe) get anything from the sales of the DVDs. That bit might be wrong though.