I'm one of those weirdos without cable. Didn't really grow-up with it, except at friends houses. Don't want yet another bill. Afraid that if I did get it, I'd watch too much TV Land, Discovery, History, A&E-type stuff and would never get anything done!
But damn, broadcast TV has really gotten BAD!!! If it wasn't for PBS and CBC (Canada) there would be absolutily nothing on Sat/Sunday morning TV but infomercials!! I notice that a lot of non-network stations are even running double episodes of crap TV like "Friends", "Will & Grace" and so on!
I really miss the days of UHF before the invasion of Fox, WB, UPN. Every weekday our Detroit channel 50 always had "The Eight O'clock Movie", which was usually something cool from the 70s like "Superfly", "Blues Brothers", "Bullit" or "Freebie & the Bean". Sometimes there would be a theme, like Kung-fu week or Japanese Monster week. Today we get "The Parkers" or some other insipid drivel.
Channel 20, WXON was the best for re-runs. I remember a solid block of Adams Family, Twilight Zone, Leave it to Beaver, then Lost in Space. Now it's 2 hours of poorly drawn Japanese cartoons/toy commericals.
Channel 62 WGPR was the lowest budget station. If Channel 50 ran B-movies, Channel 62 ran C's and D's! They also did a bunch of low-rent, local dance shows which could be good for some laughs! Currently, 62 is our CBS affliate and is also tied-in with 50, which means double helpings of infomercials and 2 hour blocks of "Everybody loves Raymond", which is funny now and then but if I had to watch the whole thing, I'd stick my dripping-wet hand in the HV cage!
So much for serving the public interest!
