Facing an evening of badly edited 3rd-run movies and marathons of TV shows from earlier in the week? You must be watching Saturday night network programming! Or, most likely, you're not, which is the whole problem.
Saturday night was once a highly coveted time slot with "Gunsmoke," "Mission: Impossible," "Fantasy Island," "Golden Girls," "All in the Family," "M*A*S*H," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "The Carol Burnett Show," "Love Boat," and many other popular shows your grandparents watched because premium channels hadn't been invented yet and they didn't know any better. But in the last five years Saturday night network viewership has dropped 39 percent, largely because of the wide range of entertainment options available and because most of the really interesting crooks on "America's Most Wanted" have been caught by now.
Some channels are using this barren weekly wasteland to re-broadcast marathons of popular shows you might have missed the first, second, or third time around ("Just like TiVo, with twice the commercials!"). Some show "Armageddon" over and over. Some just display images of network executives weeping. But some channels, like ABC, are stepping up to the challenge.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
quote:"Block Party" -- a stop-motion, action-adventure show made entirely with Legos. Actually, that would be pretty cool.
I'd watch it. My Brother and I made endless shorts with Lego. Posted by Enigmatic (Member # 7785) on :
But, if the shorts were endless they wouldn't really be "shorts"... *head explodes*
How about a cutting-edge new debate program that's actually just actors reading off the latest arguement here on Hatrack? That'd be more entertaining and more informative than Crossfire and the like.
--Enigmatic
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
That would be hilarious. Especially since half way through the show it would disolve into a discussion of potato chips or the like.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
Two of the suggestions deleted for space:
"Smile!" – Our camera crew travels around Los Angeles and New York City secretly following and filming all the other camera crews filming reality shows, prank shows, and provocative entertainer biographies. Hijinks ensue.
"Mail Order Bride" – Watch as our hopeful bachelors find out if what they’ve ordered from overseas Web sites matches reality in any manner whatsoever. Will they get a lovely Russian maiden? A 13-year-old Laotian boy? Who knows? Tune in and see!
Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
I'm pretty sure this has happened before, but it wasn't a time I could run and check for an article. I think it's time to find the monitoring equipment and then lawyer up so you can sue for the theft of intellectual property.
The worst part is that the AP article is cr@p compared to your column. Posted by theCrowsWife (Member # 8302) on :
Great, now I have Elton John stuck in my head.
*shakes fist at Chris Bridges*
Curse you!
Good article. I can't even remember the last time I watched tv. Why bother, when anything good will come out on dvd eventually anyway?
--Mel
Posted by Goody Scrivener (Member # 6742) on :
I'm going to be the lead female in "The Desk"!!! Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
That story, or one like it, is what I read Monday that inspired the column.
Posted by Hamson (Member # 7808) on :
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That was brilliant Chris.