Yearly Review: GSN

There’s been good moments this year, but way too few. I loved Clark Pyramid coming back, 1 vs. 100, Oodles, and seeing George and Brad on The Newlywed Game, but too many bad decisions have been made this year. For instance, losing the rights to about 98% of the Goodson-Todman/Fremantle libraries. The schedule changes that followed continued to lack variety. For instance, I actually don’t really have a problem with Karn Feud airing; it’s how many times daily it is shown. I was never expecting to see an exact copycat rendition of the 1997 Dark Period schedule, but it would have been nice to see a few of the Sony shows dusted off; maybe air a few shows early in the day or on weekends. And one can’t forget the constant technical difficulties. No station is perfect, but it should not take over 8 months to adjust to new broadcasting equipment.

It really seemed from about April 2005 to March 2009, schedule changes and so forth would occur as they always do. And in spite of any negativity within them, the positive would almost always seem to outweigh the negative. It was never perfect, although really when it comes to the best schedule, that’s really in the eye of the individual anyway. But there was still a lot of fun to be had. Ever since the majority of the Goodson-Todman/Fremantle shows left, this has no longer been the case. I’d say there’s still some good, for instance, Pyramid with Dick Clark has been a joy, but the mediocrity and just plain bad overpower any much of it. And knowing the fact that reality programming is coming back into the picture after how badly it tanked in 2004, it leaves me thinking that with this decision along with no on-air mention whatsoever of their 15th year on the air (which I found to be absolutely inexcusable), the new folks running the channel now either don’t know the history of the network they’re running or they plain just don’t give a damn.

I wish I could look positively in 2010 for this network, but really I don't think I can at this point.