Well it's been awhile since I wrote my last blog. My life has changed somewhat since then..I had hoped to become an ardent blogger but somehow that didn't happen. So I am here today to give it another shot.
What propelled me here today was my local evening news at 6pm. Toronto is the 5th largest city in North America therefore I kind of expect some real news coming through the tube at 6p.m.
The lead story in this city of 3 million or more was..wait for it...the Weather. To add insult to injury it wasn't even OUR weather!! It was the storm in the Eastern U.S. as usual Buffalo got dumped on. We got rain. Now it's still April. we've had snow before in April..even May. This ladies and gentlemen was our lead story.
Now I know it's "local" [we don't get world news until 11:00pm] but we had thousands of people demonstrating on April 22nd in downtown Toronto aginst provincial budget cuts. There are students protesting [rioting?] in Montreal also against proposed cuts to budgets impacting students at University, we also have an Provincial election happening in Alberta..between the Conservative Homophobic Party and the "Wildrose" Just Slightly Less Racist Party. Both headed by women.
The lead story was the weather.
So, I thought to myself let me just punch in the old "guide" button on the remote there must be something worthwhile watching on TV tonight. After all I can get 18 Bajillion channels....of which 17, 969 Bajillion are sports programs. Hockey, Golf, Tennis, more Hockey, Baseball, Poker [that's a sport?],Curling, Skating, even more Hockey, Basketball and Football just ended so we're saved from that til the fall, even more Hockey [playoff time]Soccer, Australian Rules Football, Rugby, Nascar, Wrestling, Boxing, Kick Boxing and assorted Tournaments. Of the channels I can get [which I also pay a fancy price for via the Rogers Cable Co.] I can watch on this Monday evening
Dancing with the Stars, NOT, The Voice, NOT, NHL playoffs, Two and a Half Men...[I wouldn't watch that show if it was Two Whole Men], Canada's Got Talent [no they don't] A murder mystery showing on our local public service station...and they've only shown this one 89 times. Two or three channels are automatically out as they are in foreign languages, the Shopping Channel...the Diamond Show...their Showstopper of the Day is only $970.00 sure send me two of those!! Baseball, America's Funniest Home Videos....from 1998. Beyond Scared Straight..oh that's good if you're an inmate at Fulsom Prison! Oh and then there's the Country station All Reba all the Time! Criminal Minds is on Bravo might check that out I've only seen it 5 or 6 times this year. On and On it goes until you reach "the movie channels!!" uh huh you heard me...movie channels..."we're going to show these movies over and over and over until you can play all the parts by yourself"....not only that there will be testing on how many of the commercials you can remember! Have you ever looked to see how long a movie is going to run? I did that the other day I had seen this film at the theatre...I think it was Field of Dreams...ran the usual full length feature film length...like 2 hrs however my guide said the movie was running from 1pm - 4pm...the extra hour for commercials.
Then as you go up the "dial" [used to be a dial when I was a kid], you get to the "piece de la resistance" the Movie Network....5 or 6 channels that you pay extra for on your cable bill to watch "first run" movies. Yea right. Now I must admit the odd time you do get a real gem but most of the time you get movies that you would never pay money to see, childrens animated films, some films are more than 15 years old. The only reason I pay for this is I love HBO. Home Box Office for you newbies. HBO makes some of the finest films I've ever seen and outstanding series as well. Boardwalk Empire, Dexter [which is technically Showtime...but HBO buys them I guess]Treme, Nurse Jackie, True Blood, Mildren Pierce, so many outstanding series and documentaries. This is what I pay for..to have the access to these shows...now we also have FX channel...I only watch that for Sons of Anarchy which is a fabulous program...oh yes and American Horror Story. I also wanted to get BBC Canada which is just a joke. The programming for the most part is so old...shows from 2001 and up...no movies, I think it has one or two British programs...Antiques Roadshow...Escape to the Country...East Enders I think...that seems to come and go...but that's it. Terrible programming from a country that produces excellent tv shows. [the UK]
Now I do have a couple of network shows that I watch like Desperate Housewives...last two episodes in the show to come over the next few weeks, Awake, The Firm, Grey's Anatomy,
but that's about it for Network stuff [ABC< NBC<CBS]. Canadian programming is off the table. I refuse to watch such nonsense as Little Mosque on the Prairie [please!], Artic Air, Heartland, Ron James, Republic of Doyle, all those shows need to go into a time capsule and launched into North Korea. Canadians can make however excellent documentaries like Passionate Eye and Independent Lens.
Lastly, I do watch AMC. They have produced some incredible programs of late...including Breaking Bad, MadMen, Hell on Wheels, The Killing and the Walking Dead. That kind of makes up for all the John Wayne movies they play the rest of the time.
No, really this is lastly, I get my news from MSNBC. Great news programming day and night...far better than CNN which has in my most humble opinion gone to the dogs. However, I am a news and politics [US] junkie. I am a staunch supporter of Barack Obama and take a great interest in the United States. As they are our immediate neighbour and a super power on the world stage I think that what goes on there indirectly and sometimes directly impacts Canada. But I won't get into that...this is supposed to be about Television.
One more thing about Canadian Television that freaks me out is the amount of control the CRTC has over what we see and when we see it. The laws says we have to have a certain percentage of Canadian programming in our television content....same goes for radio...that's why radio stations play the same old tired Canadian singers and songs...first of all we don't have that many and secondly they have to. So, we watch American shows through a Canadian feed so that we will have the pleasure of viewing Canadian commercials and not American ones...God forbid!!!
So that's my rant for today....and I haven't even begun to tackle daytime programming yet. Don't get me started on that one.
