Sunday, June 26, 2011

WJBK: Disgraced (Journalist?) Edition

The trouble with Fanchon Stinger was not that she was a corrupt journalist. It's that Detroit television (and print) treats a news reader as a journalist.

http://www.mibuzzboard.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=30274

Saturday, June 4, 2011

WXON: The Babylon Project Was Their Best Hope to Not Suck

Today we have a blast from the TV past. Channel 20, WXON at the time (now WMYD), ran the syndicated Babylon 5. It was the only worthwhile show on the station in the mid-'90s. It ran Tuesdays at 8... for awhile.

In September 1996, they moved it to 1Am Saturday nights. This wasn't a problem for me at the time; it followed Saturday Night Live, and I wasn't old enough for that to be a problem. Plus, the VCR could catch it. It wasn't about to get any new viewers at that time slot, of course, and that was sad, but it was workable.
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated/browse_thread/thread/a48f86ccd50e4b5a/2eba2fea1fc71706?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22babylon+5%22+detroit+channel+20#2eba2fea1fc71706

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.tv.babylon-5/browse_thread/thread/7432dbc86867b2cd/350e943b373ea05c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22babylon+5%22+detroit+channel+20#350e943b373ea05c

And then, without warning, for the climactic episodes of a season of war, before anyone at all had DVRs and programmable channel guides that followed their shows, before people had YouTube or Hulu or even torrents, WXON changed the show to 4AM Friday night/Saturday morning. That's right; changed it, without notice, to a time before it would normally have aired, to a timeslot that no one was likely to check. For a key episode. The episode was even named "Endgame".

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated/browse_thread/thread/3ecdaafbaef3cd62/442d09da16e8fa8f?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22babylon+5%22+detroit+channel+20#442d09da16e8fa8f

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.tv.babylon-5/browse_thread/thread/1158df9d2db61e2/35ce7537495f2fad?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22babylon+5%22+detroit+channel+20&pli=1

I guess programmers expect no one to remember that kind of treatment of viewers.

It's 13 years on, and I still remember it.