Any SDopers fans, or rather, tolerant watchers of TVLand? What is their problem? Let’s see…they bring back the Cosby Show and air maybe the same 10 episodes. After prime time, they air the same King of Queens episode or two from the previous night! I mean…really? Maybe it’s time to follow the suggestion from the opening of SCTV and pitch our TVs out the window!!! 
I’m going to slide this over to Cafe Society since it’s about a TV station.
And why are they huge fans of That 70’s Show? That show has to be the most annoying show ever.
Oh, well, see, that’s totally different. :rolleyes:
I checked out when they started airing original programming.
Yes, they have some very questionable choices in what they consider to be classic TV. All of my television watching has been done over the internet for the past year, so I’m not current with what they air. I started watching TVLand when they first launched, and sometimes watched quite heavily over the years.
They used to air real classics. Lucy, Daniel Boone, programs from the 60s and 70s. Then they flopped out some shows from the 80s. Yeah, you had a whole crowd of college kids nostalgic for that decade, I could understand that. Then they started creeping in with shows born in the 90s, and that was only a decade later. Not enough time for nostalgic demand, in my opinion. But, the case could be made, sometimes. Take Wings, for example. I was made nostalgic for that show by The Simpsons. Homer was reminiscing about Wings, when those were the good ol’ days, because ‘after he watched that show on Thursday night, it was off to bed until Monday.’ So an argument could be made for Wings. But once we tolerated that, it released the floodgates and any and every show they could cheaply buy the rights to now qualified as a classic. Really, The King of Queens is on TVLand now? Disgusting. It’s not aged enough, and never will.
The point of TVLand was to air forgotten classics that your local WB or UPN or whatever second-class station doesn’t run the hell out of. Shows that have been lost, under-aired and under-appreciated. Not The King of Queens.
I understand the repeats, though. I believe they’re operating under the assumption that their audience will watch the first episode at, say 8pm. Then they air a repeat the next day, say at 2pm. They figure the person watching at 8 went to work, and isn’t home the next day to watch at 2, and perhaps the person watching at 2 wasn’t home at 8. They don’t count on all the shut-ins and bedbound people that really constitute the majority of their audience that demand fresh reruns be aired 24/7. And then the weekend marathons, which are just a composite of all the episodes that already aired the last week or two, they figure whoever is watching those had lives to live and missed them and now finally have a weekend off to just watch TV.
But in the nursing home where I work, TVLand is a mainstay. At least most of them wouldn’t notice if TVLand only played one episode of a show, ever, so the formula is working, at least for part of the audience! You can tell what time it is by the theme songs that play on the hour. Little House on the Prairie coming from every room on the hall? Must be 7pm. Waltons? Must be 5pm. But that was summer, now I have to get used to Raymond and MASH. Little less dependable now with half-hour shows instead of hour intermissions between themes.
I watch TVLand for certain shows, but you know, some of those series were on for years and years. There HAVE to be episodes I missed. But they show the same ones over and over. I’m ever hopeful and check out which episodes will be show that night on the IMDB capsule synopsis, and I always think, I just SAW that one.
I watched 10 minutes of MASH and 20 minutes of commercials for old people stuff the other day.
TVLand is going the way of A&E (not much arts) and MTV (not much music videos).
I’m only interested in seeing (usually b&w) shows from the 50s and 60s. Anything that originated in the 80s when cable first became widespread (and vcrs became affordable) has already been endlessly rerun but the earlier shows are more obscure/never shown because they are b&w. I watch MeTV a lot but have noticed they are creeping into the 80s.
What I wish is that, like satellite radio with stations that only play a certain decade, 40s, 50s, or 60s etc, stations would restrict themselves to only playing shows from a certain decade. After all, there was a full schedule of shows all those years… why can’t we just watch them? Most of them never made it to DVD.
Have perspective. It is no worse than any other channel and that is why everbody is trying to abandon tv.
HBO: oh great. Short Circuit 2 again.
Fox: 5 hrs of 2 and a Half Men.
All channels at 3pm: paternity suits and tv court.
Whats worse, That 70s show, or the reruns… not much really.
OMG…I watched some of this channel when I was stuck in the hospital earlier this year. The shows are still good, but the commercials! There was one face cream one that looked like it had been produced in the early 70s…