"All New"

Have you ever noticed the promos for an upcoming episode of a TV show? They always say next week on an all new episode of (insert your favorite TV show here) and then go into the trailer for next week. To me, this "all new" saying makes no sense.

There is very little chance the show will be all new. I bet big bucks that at least one character is the same. Unless there is a show out there that has an entirely fresh cast every episode, then something is not new. If the show is serialized, such as Lost, Heroes, 24, etc., I would again wager large dollar sums that something from the plot line of a previous episode is going to carry over into next week's show.

I first noticed the "all new" saying when I was younger and watching Law & Order. They would always say "next week on an all new Law & Order, a crime so big it will blow your mind," or something to that extent. After watching the show the next week I would discover that not only did my mind not explode, but Sam Waterson was still playing Jack McCoy, what exactly is new about that?

They should either say "on next week's new episode of (insert favorite show here), Timmy falls in the well," or come up with some other means of conveying that an episode is not a re-run, because unless it is the series premiere or the entire cast got wiped out in last season's finale due to a bizarre outbreak of chicken pox, the upcoming episode will not be "all new."