Why are TV films repeated in close succession by different channels?

Has anyone ever noticed that once a film is shown on a TV channel, over the next week or two it will be shown by others. For instance Ghosbusters was shown about two weeks ago by BBC and then it was shown on UTV and then it was shown again by RTE. It happens quite often, even with not very new films? Does anyone know why this happens?

I've noticed that RTE (Irish channels) normally get in first - I presume that they just read the schedules from the UK channels and take it from there.

I dont know for a fact, I always it assumed it was something to do with the film being made available (to buy) for television. So after all the money is made from cinema, dvd, video is made, its released for television. Interested parties can buy it (this might be more than one channel). As more than channel buys the movie it is shown quite quickly (on a Saturday night or bank holiday weekend) so as not to lose viewers (why would I watch a movie on RTE that Ive already seen last weekend on channel 4). Hence over the same bank holiday weekend 2 different channels might be premiering the same movie.

I think thats right for the new releases but what about the old ones like Ghostbusters?

I'm far from an expert on this but I think I remember hearing that TV channels buy "packages" from the studios each year for broadcast - so eg Warner Brothers would have a number of movie packages available for channels which could have a number of similar movies across all packages and possbily some with restrictions on when they can be shown.

I believe that all the channels set their schedules independantly and it is pure chance that the same movies are shown close to each other - I could be completely wrong through !