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Tuesday, April 7, 2015

They Did What? Again?

I am NOT a happy camper. Last night I switched the TV channel to watch my favorite Monday night shows.

They were bounced.

Again.

 This time it was for the NCAA championship. For the last 2 weeks March Madness pretty much took over the airwaves. Almost every night there was a basketball game on, sometimes followed by a second game. With the college games done, pro basketball playoffs with take over, along with hockey.

I just looked through the listings for a major cable company and found a minimum of 9 channels devoted to sports. Nine!  I know there are more hiding in there. So why do they have to take over network channels as well??? Basketball and hockey are now competing with baseball, which just opened its season yesterday. (I don't need to watch every game that's played. I'm happy to get the final score on Sports Wrap-up segments on the nightly news)

Come August we'll have football to contend with. I admit I do watch that sport, but only when my favorite team is playing. This sport has the shortest season of all of them...sixteen weeks followed by three weeks of playoffs and the Super Bowl. I don't mind when football or golf run a bit overtime. I'll watch the last half hour of a golf tournament if I'm waiting for the next program. At least I know I still get to see my favorite shows afterward. Better late than not at all.

Then there's the programs the networks decide they don't like for whatever reason and they start moving them around during the regular season. Fans don't know where to look and the show suffers from a drop in viewership. When it drops, the show gets cancelled.  oops.

The fall season begins anywhere from late September to mid-October. By Thanksgiving everything is going into holiday reruns. In a way I can see that because people are paying more attention to the holiday season. Then from late December to sometime in April, the airwaves are bombarded with award shows. Country Music Awards. Grammy Awards. Peoples Choice Awards...(the only one viewers have any influence with) Oscars, Emmys, SAG, MTV, AM...something or other, and lots more. The second half of the season is made up more of reruns and specials than it is new episodes.

It seems the same programs get knocked off every time for all these TV specials. One special was on twice and knocked off the same program both times. The third time it was on it bumped another show. This well-known company had to have its special shown later in the evening because of its "adult" content.

Just for the heck of it, next season I fully intend to create a chart that will keep track of when the new episodes of my favorite shows are broadcast, when reruns are thrown in and when the programs are pre-empted for specials, or another hiatus.

Sometimes I get an idea for a story from a character's comment, a story setting... you never know.
Maybe I should give some thought to writing a thriller where Network execs are disappearing because of their over-enthusiastic programming manipulation. You think they'd get the hint?

Something to think about.