Along with “Anything worth doing is worth over-doing” and “No bad idea is unworthy of duplication,” another don’t-bet-against-it TV expectation has arisen:
On commercial TV, anything reliable, practical and useful can’t last; it eventually will be turned to junk.
The Weather Channel, since two years ago, when it was purchased by NBC/Universal, has only nominally served as The Weather Channel or as a weather channel. Previously a steady, friendly and credible network through which to learn local and national conditions and forecasts and to track storms, TWC has steadily become less.
Instead of weather conditions, you’re now as likely to see programs about catastrophes, from hurricanes to lava flows. Run for your life!
Last Sunday, what began as a report about the weather expected this past week at the Masters was the preface to an NBC News report about the social climate Tiger Woods could expect.
The curious part of all this is that many cable systems now carry the Weather Channel’s adjunct station, Weatherscan, a no-frills deliverer of local weather. Weatherscan largely serves as TWC once did.
For what it’s worth, in my household TWC now is tuned to as a matter of old habit, but then quickly changed to Weatherscan, which has become our weather channel. Soon, when we’re interested in the weather, we’ll know to avoid, of all networks, the Weather Channel.
And in time, I suspect, the Weather Channel will be replaced with NBGN, the Nothing But Garbage Network. Another one, as if there’s a shortage.
How many times have you watched an old or aging movie and wondered the name of an actor, or forgotten the name of an actress, or argued with a friend as to the name of some long ago character actor, from Arnold Stang to Guy Kibbee?
So you wait it out, wait for the movie’s end to view the credits. But the station or network can’t wait to sell upside-down tomato planters, thus, for crying out loud, it eliminates the credits.
That’s where Turner Classic Movies never lets anyone down. If TCM is primarily aimed at movie buffs, movie buffs are treated as movie buffs — right down to the final credit within the final credits.
That brings to mind the line about how “TV is called a medium because when it’s well done it’s rare.”
3 comments:
i'm sure the late john hope of the weather channel has turned over in his grave at how a great thing was destroyed by politics on a liberal station.
i no longer watch it at all. use accu weather and the nat. weather service feds online.
When I turned on the weather channel the other day, they were giving me "news reports" that had nothing to do with the weather.
If I had wanted to see the "news" I would have turned on CNN or FNC.
Complete waste of time, since they never got around to dealing with the actual weather during that segment.
On a positive note, I have not seen as much of chicken-little-the-sky-is-falling-doom-and-gloomster Heidi Cullen lately. Don't know if this is a good thing or not, however.
Joe,
I thought you would like to know that your links on this article are messed up. (Either that, or you are trying to do something with the links that I don't understand.)
For instance, your link to NBC News (http://sz0050.wc.mail.comcast.net/t/NBC_News) comes back with an "Email Currently Unavailable."
On a (somewhat) unrelated note, the little "pop up" that you have that says "You are trying to steal copyrighted material" is obnoxious, inaccurate, and comes across kind of arrogant. I don't know you and haven't read enough of your blog to presume that this would be an accurate description of you (I would guess that it would not be), but I thought I would let you know how this comes across.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to right click and being accused of trying to "steal copyrighted information" for right clicking is uncalled for.
For instance, when I read through a blog with a lot of links, I like to keep one page with that blog and then open all the links that interest me with a right click - open as new window.
This allows me to check out the things linked to and to be able to continue to read down the original blog and then come back and read through the links that interested me.
The way you have it set up, some of the links open in a new window (which does what I am trying to do by right-clicking), but others do not - for instance, the link to the editorial regarding the Black Panthers. Clicking on the link from the Black Panthers article takes you to the editorial and when you go back in the browser it brings you to the top of the blog and you have to scroll down to where you left things - kind of annoying.
Also, it is kind of ironic that you would have a pop-up that reads "You are trying to steal copyrighted information" and then post your "Life Thoughts" post (http://sbynews.blogspot.com/2010/04/life-thoughts.html) without any kind of alert that the comments are not original and a reference to the appropriate source (or at least an acknowledgement that the source is unknown, etc.).
Just my thoughts,
Frank
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