Ugh, once again my Saturday afternoon lineup is preempted by Twin Cities Public Television’s (TPT) bizarre pledge-drive programming. I’m not talking about the anonymous personalities schlepping for my hard-earned bucks; I’m talking about the programs they run in-between. Who watches this stuff? Three hours of some home-remedy guy telling us how he cleans his dishes with his own pee, then the “stay awake if you can” documentary on South Carolina glass-blowing…A DOCUMENTARY ON SOUTH CAROLINA GLASS BLOWING…are they trying to threaten us with boredom to get our money? And I haven’t even mentioned the “seminars” they show…“Suzie Orman’s Road to Awful Greed” or whatever and that bald guy…oof. Wouldn’t one think that PBS would pull out the big guns during pledge drives in case they thought that ATTRACTING VIEWERS might be a good idea? I’m sending my money to the E! channel.
For pete’s sake!
Give them a few bucks, you cheapskate!
And I could use a few dollars myself.
Oh, I don’t know; I like the Red Green begathons! I remember this one year, a woman said she’d pledge $1000 if Red would take his hat off. So he did! And another caller said she’d pledge some big amount if she could talk to Harold, so he got on the line, said, “Uh huh,” a few times, listened in apparent shock for a moment, then started jittering and woo-hooing like he does! (Lotta women like this show, don’t they!) And they do sketches with the different characters, and display duct-tape stuff fans send in…The Red Green drives seem to be the most profitable!
I’ve got a question, which is a bizarre thing to be doing in the Pit, but here ya go:
No idea what help (if any) it was for PBS to have a little BBC content, but I wonder if now BBC America is increasingly available on cable it’s going to bite into PBS’s coffers at all ?
…for example, going back aways, I seem to remember ‘Masterpiece Theatre’ being quite popular and some of those were BBC productions.
Be a shame to see it suffer.
Oh, I’m with you all the way, Torgo! And then when it isn’t Suzy Ormond or the bald guy, it’s the damn Three Irish Tenors every night for a week! Or whatever the current musical special is. You know, I liked the Irish Tenors the first night I saw them. But then I turn on the TV the next night, and there the bastards are again! And the next night! And the next! Where’s Mystery? Where’s Antiques Roadshow? Where’s anything actually worth watching? It’s getting to where I’ll give them next month’s paycheck if they’ll only take this crap off the air! (And maybe that’s their plan.)
Now, the glassblowing show is a favorite of the paidhi-girl. In fact, her favorite part is the breaks in between where they offer expensive pieces of glass if you’ll only pledge your firstborn to PBS. “Mama, look, it’s the glass show!” she’ll shout, and watch rapt as the annoying announcers hawk glass. In between pledge breaks she asks, “When are they going to show the glass show again?”
I blame her father.
The Irish Tenors aren’t that bad. It’s James Last who sets my teeth on edge.
James Fucking Last. Know who he is? Neither do I. All I know is that he gives Lawrence Welk a good name and turns mediocre pop songs into Muzak. And not even GOOD Muzak!
But that’s not even the worst part.
He shows up every goddamned TPT pledge drive. You know what that means? Enough people donate enough money during his appearances that they keep bringing him back!!!
I want *Mystery!**back! I want American Family back! I want Frontline back! I want American Experience back!
It’s bad enough there ain’t shit on TV on summer. Now I can’t even turn to PBS for something palatable!
:mad:
See how mad they make me? I can’t even code properly!!
Yeah! I want to watch freakin’ This Old House like I do every week, not the tired-ass Simon & Garfunkel Concert in Central Park. How old is that anyway? Who hasn’t already seen that 101 times? I remember watching that with my dad when it was first run and I think I was maybe 8 or 9 years old. The last good thing they had on for a pledge drive here was the Motley Fool special where the Motley Fool guys were in the studio answering caller questions and helping beg for pledges. Actually, there was also a great special a while back called Sin, Fire & Gold about the early days of San Francisco. It was based on a walking tour book (written by a guy named Bacon, I believe) that I ended up buying. But if they kept trotting it out year after year like they do the rest of the stuff I’d hate it just as much.
They always show the good stuff during the begfests, but then you never see them again (unless you donate a LOT of money and get a “free” copy).
We have pretty good local stuff-like Church Lady cooking-that’s really interesting-here at our Pittsburgh affiliate, WQED, they put out these cookbooks featuring recipes from local churches, and since Pittsburgh has a lot of ethnic burrows and churches, a LOT of ethnic food. (Especially eastern European!)
And of course, our radio station, WQED is one of the best in the country.
We have pretty good local stuff-like Church Lady cooking-that’s really interesting-here at our Pittsburgh affiliate, WQED, they put out these cookbooks featuring recipes from local churches, and since Pittsburgh has a lot of ethnic burrows and churches, a LOT of ethnic food. (Especially eastern European!)
And of course, our radio station, WQED is one of the best in the country.
Did you mean “boroughs,” or do you really drive your ethnic-types underground?
– Uke, who reads K.C. Constantine novels for the food descriptions
D’oh!!!
There’s still a PBS? Wow, you learn something new everyday. Here it is, only 3:00a.m. and I’ve learned something new, that’s my quota for the day. 
Is it just me or are the pledge drives getting more frequent? I thought they only used to be twice a year and now it seems that they are quarterly.
I pledged, at least to the Dallas PBS station about 3 months ago. For my $150 pledge I got Joseph Campbell’s Power of Myth on DVD. I call that win - win.
I’m about ready to start pledging the week after the pledge drive ends, when they bring back the shows I watch in the first place.
We get the Red Green pledge shows on APT from time to time, but we don’t get The Red Green Show! So the only people who know what it is are people like me who saw it living other places or bought the tapes. The locals who have never seen the show have no reason to pledge and support keeping on the air a show that we don’t get anyway! Sometimes during these things APT teases that Red Green is a show they are “considering” picking up. They’ve been considering for five damn years! Shit or get off the pot! You’ll need something to replace Lawrence Welk reruns when his last three fans in the state die any fucking day now!
APT can stick Suzie Orman, James Last, Jim Brickman, Rock, Rhythm, and Doo Wop, Dr. Wayne Dyer, AND Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 50th Birthday Celebration up it’s collective assholes!
Pain is not only putting up with channel 2 (TPT) AND channel 17 (TPT2) pledge drives BUT there was some cosmic antenna glitch and I ALSO had the privilege (sp?) of channel 18 (WPT-Wisconsin?) and a PBS station out of Sioux Falls.
Okay, the Charlotte Church program of WPT was pretty decent, nbut I despise Suzie, Dr Wayne etc etc.!
Give me my Red Green! My bread making monk! My Hometime!
I got stuck watching “Classic Cars of Cuba”, where they show all the rolling relics on this turd in the Carribean. They made it sound so freakin’ romantic and nostalgic. “Juan enjoys going to the waterside with his favorite girl, just like his father, to watch the sun setting from the back of a Chrysler convertable. In fact, this very same car!” I got news for ya, it ain’t nostalgic. Its a freakin’ tragedy! This place is stuck in the 50’s and developmentally retarded. If you don’t keep that piece of shit rolling, you’ll be walking, cause you ain’t gonna get another one. Nostalgic my ass!
Then they try to get me to pony up $90 and get a free copy of this shit. Hey, I got an idea! I’ll send the $90 if you don’t send me a copy. Now put Frontline on, Goddammit!
My pet suffers from dyslexia and a Christ complex.
Pledge month in Chicago (that’s how long it seems anyway) is usually a week of the same Peter, Paul and Mary concert over and over. They do also feature the Three Tenors a little too much for my taste. Sometimes they do show a good series on Chicago architectural history, which I don’t mind watching again, and last night they featured Simon and Garfunkel in Central Park. Haven’t seen that in a while so it was a nice change.
The funniest part of the whole pledge drive is the fact that they keep re-using the same studio footage. A friend is in a group that volunteered to answer phones two years ago. I’ve seen that same night repeated at least 3 times since then. It makes me wonder who’s really answering the phones and how they feel about not being on camera.
I think the best segments I’ve ever seen of these things were during a special broadcast of Red Dwarf. Two of the premiums were vhs tapes of out-takes and bloopers from the shows called “Smeg-Ups” and “Smeg-Outs.” Just seeing the prim and proper PBS hostesses pronouncing the word “smeg” on the air about five hundred times with clearly no idea what it meant was priceless. Even the idle call-takers in the background weren’t smirking. I was laughing my ass off through the entire thing.