For the last couple of weeks, reception on the sci fi channel has been SO shitty. We use TiVo to record shows, then watch them later… well it doesn’t record if there is no signal… which means that if the reception is really crappy, you may have an hour show recorded as only 56 minutes or something. Well lately some shows are coming up less than half their proper length. MST3k, which is TWO HOURS was 2 minutes long. It was just a series of flashes, static, and garbled sound. If you try to just directly watch these shows, you just get a blue screen.
Anyway, I’m damn sick of it!! None of the other channels are doing it, just Sci Fi! And I watch more shows on that than practically any channel! GRRRR!!!
Quantum Leap is ONE HOUR not 37 minutes! Not 43 minutes! ONE HOUR! 60 minutes! Star Trek (tos) is NOT a 12 minute show! A day, maybe two, I could understand. A couple of weeks? Someone is gonna go down.
I have a satellite dish at home, and there’s cable at work. (Yeah, we can watch TV at work - long story.) I switched from cable to satellite a few years ago because I was so SICK of the cable bullshit.
At work, the Bravo channel consistently comes in shitty. Not so at home, on the dish. It comes in crappy at work because it’s on CABLE!!!
Actually, I switched to the dish specifically because of the Sci Fi Channel. The pissant Hooterville cable company out here had been promising us that the Sci Fi Channel was coming “Soon! Real soon!” “Real soon” apparently is about 2 years. Screw them. I love my dish, don’t miss cable at all.
I’ve had the same cable company for nearly three years and there has always been one channel that didn’t come in right. It changes now nad again. Currently, it is the Food Channel, which I don’t watch, but if Sci-Fi went bad, I’d have to go down to the offices prepared to kill.
Don’t come between me and B5 unless you want to die a slow and painful death. It’s that simple.
Admittedly it was the Sci-Fi Channel Europe, and it was the satillite company that was really to blame.
But one week they replaced my beloved MST3K with…with…A Bloody PORN CHANNEL!! Yeah there was I, all ready to spend some quality time with Mike and the 'bots and instead there was some fuzzy screen with a label telling me to call a number to get connected and all these “ooh ooh” noises and grunting and groaning and really distorted cheesy porn music and hey! It was not as funny as MST3K! It was mildly amusing, but it just wasn’t the same dammit!
And they won’t show MST3K on any channel in this country because it a. doesn’t get big enough audience figures and b.they have trouble licensing the films for this country apparantly. So chances are I will never see it again! sob!
Anyway the whole point of this rambling post is:
YOU DIE SCI FI CHANNEL!! YOU GO TO HELL AND YOU DIE!!
Actually the fact that they cancelled it probably has more to do with the fact that licensing the films for MSTing was getting expensive and the fact that the owners of the copyrights didn’t really like having their properties ridiculed.
That and the fact that the Sci-Fi channel is ruled by evil philistines!
I have to say I didn’t think it was getting old, I loved it and I only ever saw the last two seasons, I gaze with rapt wonder at the “Joel is better than Mike” flamewars, I never saw Joel so I have no idea if he is better or not!
Yeah Damn them for cancelling it as well! Prod another pitchfork into their posteriors for me Mr. Satan!
It may not be the cable provider. I had this problem too, for weeks Fox came in horribly. Then I discovered that when I wiggled the cable to the cable box, reception changed. I replaced the cable, and it’s back to normal. Why it was that channel and no other, I don’t know.
I think nobody picked up MST3K because of its format. There was and is nothing out there like it and TV execs never like taking up 2 hours of programming with something that’s not formulaic. Especially a network in the MTV family.
The sad thing is, Sci Fi now shows MSTie-caliber movies on their own and labels them “classics”.
The movie “The Day The World Exploded in The Year 7000” was the seminal “dude-in-a-foam-rubber-monster-suit” movie.
Bleh.
Joel has always been the campy one, playing the father figure to the bots, chastizing them for the occasional innuendo or double entendre. He was very often stoned as hell during taping. Check out the host segments during Cave Dwellers to see Joel at maximum bake setting.
Mike however, was the Everyman. The archetypical normal guy in abnormal circumstances. The bots were not his children, but his equals. Or betters. He was trained in the theatrical arts rather than in the lowly prop comedy that his predecessor dabbled in. As such, he was much less likely to sing the praises of pants, but he was always much much sharper.
Whomever you identify with more will be superior in your eyes.
You probably have a point there Alphagene. Yeah the 2-hour legnth of the programme probably had a lot to do with its cancellation. In fact, Sci-Fi Europe for a short time showed a heavily edited version of MST3K with the host segments cut out (I missed them!)
Curses to the Sci-Fi channel for just ‘not getting’ true innovation!!
Hmmm…sounds like I’d like Mike better. I do know in the MST3K bits I’ve downloaded from Kazaa and Napster which is my only exposure to Joel that he does come over a bit more authoritarian than Mike. He tells Tom that he will throw him against the wall if he doesn’t stop doing his Anthony Newley!!
I always dig equality, my vote is for Mike I think…not that anyone was holding an election or anything but if they were…I’d go for Mike.
And, so as not to go too far off topic…DIE Sci Fi Channel! Fuck you with an Acid-dipped Cactus and Die!!
