I sit here more annoyed than I should be. I like to end my evenings with a good laugh. Something which is more than deserved given I spent a good part of my prime time viewing watching the ugliness of the situation in Egypt on MSNBC shows and then Bill Maher’s Real Time on HBO, which is somewhat funny, but mostly serious political stuff.
So to have my favorite late night show pre-empted by the local CBS affiliate WTSP, which likes to market itself as 10 Connect (as in connecting with the community), to air a soap opera, Young and the Restless it appears, is maddening.
Look, I understand why they chose to cover the funeral of two St Petersburg police officers today. But, it was their choice to spend nearly half the day covering it. It was their choice to pre-empt the soap. It is the same audience that watches soaps that are interested in watching sad coverage of police funerals.
While those viewers may be upset their show was pre-empted, what gives the local affiliate the right to then upset a whole other set of viewers by putting in on in the place of the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, especially with no running ticker at the bottom for explanation or time for when the show can be seen. It better come on here at the end of this stupid show, which is the only one I hope considering they also pre-empted it earlier in the week for the stand-off the officers were involved with in the first place.
It is particularly more frustrating considering the local affiliate goes into infomercial mode after Ferguson’s show is done. I don’t think many would have been offended if they would have pre-empted that garbage with a soap, which I doubt extremely few daytime viewers are actually watching live, but are instead taping. I say taping, because it’s not like the could have recorded it on DVR considering its not in the digital schedule. Makes me wonder if these schmoes were running a ticker today saying they were going to do this, or any kind of notices during prime time – not that I would have known since I did not watch anything on CBS tonight.
Speaking of not giving notice. How ‘bout last week when the networks decided to cover the Tucson funeral because the President was speaking. Once again, I had no issue with the choice, but the least the moron networks could have taken a few moments to mention or run a ticker that it was coming up instead of running repeats or completely different programming than what was scheduled. It was a bit annoying. I flipped the channels and assumed their must be some sort of Presidential thing coming up considering they were all off, but note to the big wigs: not everybody has internet. And even if they do, it still would not have been a big help. I went to each of the networks home pages… and nothing. Every single one of them was still promoting that night’s prime time lineup even after prime time had begun. Even the MSNBC site, sister of NBC, did not have a clear mention of the change in programming. You had to guess from reading about the President that it was going to be on the air even though the story did not explicitly say so.
There is no excuse for this is this modern era of technology. If I can be annoyed to no end with ‘mandatory monthly emergency broadcast tests’ seemingly every week, then they can do the decent thing and run a ticker or something when things change. And these networks are huge. Are you telling me they have nobody available to update their websites on call? I can’t imagine that the decision to air the President’s speech was made all that late in the day, not that they couldn’t make the change after regular business hours anyway.
End of Rant(s)!
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