Richard Jones' Log: What are the TV programmers thinking???

Thu, 29 Apr 2004

We pretty much watch two shows on TV: Angel and Alias. The latter is often painful, but after Angel it's the most interesting scripted show on television at the moment.

Angel started out this season showing at 10:30pm on a Tuesday night. That's bearable - we're used to this kind of timeslot for Buffy and Angel. Then it got moved to Thursday night. Then to 11:30pm. We don't care, since we're off to bed at 9pm we're taping it anyway. And you get all those kooky post-midnight ads to fast-forward through.

Last week Angel didn't air at all - in its place was "Average Joe 2: Hawaii". Erk. They did screen an episode of Alias (which also screens on Tuesday at 9:30pm) that night though, so we had something to watch the next night.

This week, Alias is screening tonight at 9:30 (still on Tuesday too). And Angel's back at 11:30. And in between? Yep, "Average Joe 2: Hawaii".

Wierd.

Comment by Patrick on Thu, 29 Apr 2004

Where on earth do you live? I think perhaps you have a substandard WB station in your town. ;)

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, Angel shows consistently at 9 pm Weds. New episodes were aired last week and tonight.

Comment by Richard on Thu, 29 Apr 2004

This is a free-to-air station (cable is nowhere near as big here as in the US - we don't have it connected). It is the same station that aired Buffy, and that's really its only redeeming feature. In pretty much every other aspect of its programming, it sucks. This season it launched half a dozen or so new "reality" shows - all of which have dived. That doesn't include the imported reality shows, either.

Comment by oier on Thu, 29 Apr 2004

Here in spain is worse.Examples:

  • Angel Sunday 1:00am
  • Odissey 5 Thursday1:00am
The usual timeframe for fantastic/sci-fi series is very often after the midnight. I think that the reason of this is that the national series (some of them are good too) are in the high audience timeframe.

Comment by Andy Todd on Thu, 29 Apr 2004

Over here in the mother country it's on Sky at 9pm on Tuesday evenings, just after Eliza Dushu's new series (the jury is still out on that one though).

If you don't want to pay Mr Murdoch your �40 a month things get a little more iffy. Channel 5 show it on free to air but quite a while after Sky.

I really don't miss Channel 7, home to the worst tv presenter in the world - Bruce McAvaney.