I found this strange as well.  An article I came across suggested that it was necessary in order to give new cast members, and new production staff a break as it has been a very busy, demanding pre-season as well as a hectic three weeks for the first live shows of season 48.  

The article as mentioned that the first three shows have not appeared to be solid or cohesive... 

Thankfully, Weekend Update still knocks it out of the park.



 

See for me this is the opposite.  After a whole summer and partial spring of repeats you kick off the fall season with two or three new shows and then into a repeat show from a few weeks ago?  Not a way to build up an audience or hang on to what you have.                                                                                   

The scenes for next week become less important if the flow of new shows are going to be interrupted every few weeks with another repeat.  Aren't you sort of jerking around the audience?  And you have less chance that the audience will come back in November for the next new program since the momentum is gone.  I didn't realize there were so many scripted shows into repeats already.  They would have been smarter to delay the new season by a couple of weeks and run the new shows into December. 

Some network series run 22 episodes but more and more don't.  18, 16 and even as low as 10 are becoming more common.  But the schedule you mention Mace doesn't account why so many repeats only two or three weeks after the kick off of the fall season.  We are still in October and many scripted shows as RA pointed out have already had one rerun.  And the late night talk shows already repeating is sort of strange.  Must be to keep costs in line.  And why would you repeat a show that ran only a few weeks back? 

I still think they should have bumped the new fall season back by a couple of weeks and then run the new product from the third or forth week of October right though to a week or two before Christmas. This way you are not bouncing around with new and older shows and it gives new programs a chance to build momentum and find their audience.  Networks have lots of time later in the year for re runs.  

I could have sworn there was a possible writer's strike coming up very soon, but I couldn't find any current information.

Matt's answer makes sense.  It is good that the public is noticing as well and a reader wrote in.  Also in the mix is the fact that in some cases they just aren't producing as many shows in a season.  Whether this is because of the pandemic or just to save money, the end result is fewer programs per year for many series.
Too bad this is happening especially for OTA television which has seen their prime time ratings evaporate over the past 10-15 years.  This makes it harder to patch together a full season with repeats interspersed or programs cancelled some weeks just to stretch out the season.  

If you think this is getting tedious, just wait. I'm seeing previews for the week after the U.S. midterms advertising many (but not all) regular series as preparing for their "mid-season finales." That likely means a hiatus, possibly into the New Year.

We'll see how many take this route and when, but the promos have been pretty clear without overtly stating it that reruns are coming. Seems a bit early, especially when you consider that all of November used to be a major sweeps month, when networks loaded up on new episodes and specials. Seems times have changed.