Saturday, November 14, 2009

A Little Cable TV Venting...

What is up with cable nowadays?

As I go through my Ryan’s Hope episodes this week I notice a promo for a mini-marathon of Cougar Town this Saturday on SOAPnet from 5-7 pm.

There’s only one problem with this… Cougar Town is a COMEDY, with no drama of any kind in it. Now this is not being used as a platform to bash that particular show. I’ve seen it a couple times and it really isn't as bad as I thought it would be. I’m also a fan of Courteney Cox so it’s nice seeing her on the screen again, and I wish it didn‘t come on the same time as Glee. But this isn’t about that. This is about the fact that the network that's supposed to be devoted to daytime dramas has put them in the position of second fiddle. The miscellany stuff seems to get much more attention than the actual soaps.

With all the reality garbage this network has been cranking out, along with the Sunday Night Movie, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, and I’m not. And what I love the most is that network and production executives always wonder why people flock to sites like YouTube and Dailymotion. At this point it just seems as though the train of thought is “if the network won’t provide material for the fans, the fans will do it themselves.”

We've also got GSN giving Carnie Wilson a reality show come January. Do the new people running the programming on this network even know its own history? They’ve tried to go in “a different direction” with reality and it didn’t work. Reality shows have failed on GSN. Every single one. A few of them may have done well at first, but then the ratings tank and if they’re not pulled entirely from the network they’re shoved off to 2 or 3 am and then they‘re gone (see Kenny vs. Spenny, The Amazing Race). Even one done based on another actual game show host, Chuck Woolery, in 2003, bombed as well.

And there’s more craziness than that on other channels. I flipped past The Weather Channel tonight and I see they’re airing Misery. Yeah, that's right. The MOVIE, Misery. Who thought this was a good idea? Yeah, who gives a damn about a possible Nor’easter forming when there’s a much more important blockbuster movie we can air instead? Geez, Louise.

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