Local TV Station Apathy?

[mhadley]

What the hell happened to local independent TV stations in this country? I know, some are technically not independent anymore since they picked up MyNetwork or CW affiliations but they are still more or less independent. More and more this bane on TV called "PAID PROGRAMING" seems to have taken over.

I work at a former UPN station that is now a MyNetwork station and it sickens me that well over half of the broadcast day is INFOMERCIALS. The station I work at used to have infomercials only in the wee hours of the morning, the rest of the day was old movies or syndicated programs. Looking through the old betas in the storeroom (and there are tons) I see we used to air shows like these as recently as the late 90s or ones like CSI and Enterprise as recently as 2 years ago.

CSI
Enterprise
Star Trek (Classic)
Twilight Zone (Classic)
Cheers
St. Elsewhere
Hill Street Blues
Dennis The Menace
Wacky World Of Tex Avery
The Little's
Green Acres
Andy Griffith Show
Outer Limits
Tons of old movies (of which there are still literally hundreds of tapes in the storeroom of which we no longer have the rights for, hell we still have old movies on FILM REELS back there)

Back in the day our station had first run shows like:
Babylon 5
Beastmaster
Sirens
Earth: Final Conflict
Freddys Nightmares
Twilight Zone (80's Version)
21 Jumpstreet (4th Season)
Small Wonder
Tales From The Darkside
Monsters
Punky Brewster (Final Season)

Here is (ballpark, I might be missing a show here or there) how the weekday and weekends here go (not in order though):

Average Weekday:
3 hours of whatever MyNetwork has on for primetime
1 hour of The Simpsons
1 hour of Malcom In The Middle
1 hour of South Park
1 hour of According To Jim (1 30 minute episode in the afternoon, 1 30 minute episode at night)
1 30 minute episode of My Wife And Kids
1 30 minute episode of Home Improvement
1 hour of Cops
1 hour of Tyra Banks Show
1 hour of the Judges (Alex and that black chick who's name escapes me for the moment)

Thats it. Thats an average weekday. The rest of the time is damn infomercials.

Average Weekend:
3 hours of whatever MyNetwork has on for primetime
2 hours of a movie at noon and another at 4
Archie Cartoon on Saturday Morning
1 hour of Stargate
1 hour of Stargate: Atlantis
90 minutes to 2 hours (depending on the movie) of Chiller Theater movie on Saturday Nights at 11pm
1 hour of The Shield on Sunday Nights
Jack Van Impe Presents (30 minutes on Sunday Night, right after The Shield, great lead in huh)

The rest is that dreaded PAID PROGRAMING. My boss tells me it's all about money and nothing more, he can get a guaranteed $1000 for some infomercial(s) for 2 hours or plug in an old movie and get, maybe, $300-$400 in ad sales so infomercial it is.

That just sickens me on 2 levels, one, that I don't think I am crying Wolf if I say that at this pace in 3 years the station will be ALL infomercials since they are guaranteed money, and two, that these business pay for that spot that PEOPLE ACTUALLY WATCH (I assume so, otherwise they would not pay for the spot but I have honestly never met anyone that watches an infomercial, everyone I know sees an infomercial and goes "****, an infomercial" and changes the channel). Seriously, are there that many people that watch these things and buy this snake oil that these places make a profit?

How do we take back our local stations before they vanish into "Paid Programing" hell? The death of a major First Run Syndication market doesn't help but do you think that calling and telling these station managers that you won't watch ANYTHING on their station if they keep this up will do any good? Is it all short term gain? Seriously, if these stations get more and more infomercial nuts and people tune out, sooner or later the infomercials will stop paying and the station will have **** away any real viewership.

Hell, the one I work for has become such a joke in my area that when I mentioned (to more then one person on more then one occasion) I work on Chiller Theater (been on the air in the area off and on since 1985 so the show is kind of an institution) on 32, the general response is "really, I thought 32 was all infomercials nowadays".... or "do they even have real programming anymore".....

The local FOX and CW stations have some of the cool shows that we would most likely show if possible like Outer Limits, Smalleville, Star Trek (Redo), Farscape etc..... too many stations competing for a limited number of shows huh?

One small interesting thing is that we lose the rights to the Stargates late in the year, and the MGM rep is trying to sell us a package of Dead Like Me and Poltergeist: The Legacy to replace it, that could be kind of cool....

The local FOX and CW stations have some of the cool shows that we would most likely show if possbile like Outer Limits, Smalleville, Star Trek (Redo), Farscape etc..... too many stations competeing for a limited number of shows huh?

One small interesting thing is that we lose the rights to the Stargates late in the year, and the MGM rep is trying to sell us a package of Dead Like Me and Poltergeist: The Legacy to replace it, that could be kind of cool....

[ma932588]

thats why most of what i watch comes from a 24h movie station and my season box sets of old shows. i rarely watch any commercial television, its just not interesting to me. about 7- 10 hours a week of network shows