Okay, so in your British Saturday Night lineup you have dropped two shows, Vicar of Dibley and Monty Python, and added Dr Who. The first one I will not complain about, as it was repeating episodes anyway, but I still watched the Python even if it was starting to repeat episodes too.
I groused about it internally a bit.
Then I noticed something. All of the British shows had been repeating episodes, a phenomenon I noticed about all of them at the same time.
The series that started repeating include:
Monty Python
Are you being served? / GaF
The Good Life/Neighbors
Vicar of Dibley
Notice something odd here? If you don’t reread the paragraph before my list:
To notice what’s wrong with this, take a look at the episode count of VoD versus, say, the Python.
That’s right. Apparently, WMFE can’t be arsed to show more than 17 episodes of any of these shows.
In order to see all the episodes, I’ll be forced to buy the complete python collection from PBS. I just hope they I’m not forced to name a local PBS affiliate, as I have never given money to WMFE and I don’t want them to get a dime from me.
I have an impression that with BBC America, A&E, and other outlets for British programming, it has gotten much more expensive for PBS affiliates to acquire it. It’s not that they “can’t be arsed” to show more than a 17-episode block. It might simply be that they can not afford to purchase more than that in a year.
It may just be in the way shows are packaged. As acsenray said, there is a lot of competition between PBS, BBC America and A&E for a finite number of shows, since they’ve all gone out of production. So PBS gets some, BBC America gets some and A&E gets some. Unfortunately, this leads to repeating episodes. :shrug:
A&E sells a DVD boxset–14 DVDs–of the complete Monty Python’s Flying Circus. I believe its MSRP is $200, but you can find it most places for no more than $150.
It could be worse. Your PBS affiliate could be buying My Hero for the Saturday night line up and only showing Flying Circus at 2am on the third alternate Saturday following a Friday the 13th.
Somewhat off-topic, but related: is “Are You Being Served?” really that popular in the US? How about back in the UK? It’s on practically every PBS station in the country, b ut it seems like nobody ever mentions it.
Exactly. While I never kept track of when they were repeating, I noticed that they were all repeating at the same time. Even the ones that had many more than 17 episodes. Which is how I first figured out that there are plenty of episodes unaired. Looking at the plot descriptions of the ones I haven’t seen it appears I’m right.
But I’m not complaining about repetitions, or even dropping, the ones I have already seen nearly all of the episodes of (Vicar of Dibley.)
Not sure. But one reason might be that everyone (or MOSTLY everyone :mad: ) has seen most of them already and consider it old hat. I was beginning to as well before I learned there are plenty of episodes I haven’t seen.
$75? Sweet, I might even drop by BB after work. From PBS it’s more like $150+. To repeat Auto, SCREW PBS!
Specifically for the Python, yeah, it’s not the same. In fact, even watching them on channels other than PBS is not the same since they seem to take out a lot of the joining material to make room for commercials (or I might be mistaken, haven’t watched it off PBS in more than a decade.)
Well, I got mine for $59 at Half Price Books. They still had a shit load of 'em last time I was there.
EDIT: Just went on their website, and they do not appear to have any stores in FL. Oops. Sorry.