Ordinary Nothing

Most TV channels here are purchased. Many from the US, and some from
European and other countries. But there are a few local channels.

Only one of them is fully a commercial channel. Several different
broadcasting companies wanted a channel, of course. But only one is
allocated. So they go by the odd way of giving the franchise by days of the week
rather than by channel. There are three different companies that divide
the days of the week between them.

This of course starts endless bickering over the days. Someone will
get more, or less, viewers simply by getting "better" and "worse" days.
So as a compromise, they just change the schedule once in a while, and
switch days. This is supposed to be fair.

And for the broadcasters, I suppose it relatively is. For viewers, it can sometime be very annoying.

First, you have the regular amusing occurrences. Someone having
Friday can create a program called "Friday Evening" and have it on
Fridays. Imagine the fun when it starts to be showed on Thursdays
instead… Things like that can really give you a few WTF?! moments when you look at the daily TV schedule…

Then there’s the problem of shows changing days. Purchased, and even
local, series don’t have the same lengths, and aren’t always started at
the same time. Even more, the day switching dates aren’t dependant on
the broadcasting schedule of shows. So if you’re used to having a show
on a specific day, it can up and switch some week, and it won’t be on
season’s end.

Like what happened right now, which prompted this post. See, the
thing is, they did announce the day change a bit on the channel. I think. But
I’m not the kind of person who sits all days in front of the TV. I only
watch the very specific shows I know I want to see. This limits my
ability to notice those announcements. They also might have shown them
a few times during commercials, but not all the time, and like I say I
don’t watch that many shows. More so, in this channel they have too
many commercials. Way too many. So I tend to ignore them altogether.
[Note to broadcasters: Less commercials will improve the effectiveness of those that you do show! Seriously!].

First time I learned that they exchanged days this month, was this
evening when my parents told me there was a show on which I usually watch. I was a
bit surprised, since it’s usually on Sundays, not Thursdays. I asked
what gives, and was told that they probably( probably. Both my
parents didn’t notice the alleged announcements either, and they’re in
front of the TV much more than I am) changed days.

Why is that a problem? Well… There was a show I wanted to watch which is later Thursday night (Alias, but that’s beside the point). Surprise, surprise, it’s there no more. It moved to Tuesday. Starting from this Tuesday. Yep, the one that just passed… And no, no reruns.

This is very annoying. Sure, I could always download the episode
from the Internet, and watch it like that. Legislature here is less
insane than in the US about it. But what if I was less Internet savvy?
Should a broadcasting company really count on the ability of the
viewers to download episodes from the Internet in a legal grey area?
Not everyone can, even if they wants to…

The Pre-Eurovision show was just broadcasted here. The supposedly best
singers and bands Israel has to offer were competing to decide who will
represent us in the Eurovision contest.

And I must say that so far I’m impressed. No, not with the songs, those are all seriously bad. They’re so bad, that I think it must be done on purpose.

Think about it. International relations are not too hot for us this
year. We’re practically bound to lose votes due to politics, even if
the song would be excellent. The result would be a lot of angry people
complaining about it. Complaining about how all those countries (which
would be labelled by the angry people as anti-Semitic for that) vote
against us on purpose. That’s not the way to encourage harmony and
peace. So instead, someone found out a way to prevent that.

We’ll send a bad singer, with a bad song. That way when we get poor
votes, nobody will take it too hard when we get voted down. It’s
downright brilliant.

And how do you make sure that the winning song here is bad? Easy! You
make sure all contestants are bad. Which they were. Some were plain
horrible, but the best were merely unimpressive and uninspiring. Either
the song was bad, or the singer/s were bad, or both. Mostly both.

Very sad. We do have some good singers here, good musicians, good
songs. Honestly, we do. But none of them made it as far as the
Pre-Eurovision contest…