TV and Reruns and Couldn’t They Do Something Better with that Airtime?

There was almost nothing on TV last night. So many shows are on hiatus or about to go on hiatus, and I just didn’t feel like reading and that got me thinking. TV programmers could be a lot more creative about how they use this airtime. They could air pilots that weren’t bad, but that no one picked up for one reason or another, like they didn’t think enough men 18-30 would watch them or something.

Actually, why don’t they air the best of all the pilots they’ve seen but didn’t pick up and let the audience vote to include one! They could give it a limited run, just to see, maybe four to six episodes. Other things they could air during this period: experimental tv (search YouTube and find the emerging artists), student tv, they could ask filmmakers or television producers for their favorite failures, something they tried but didn’t quite hit the mark for them, and then they could talk about why and what they’d do or did differently.

They could air better nostalgia tv. I say “better nostalgia tv” because I know there are channels airing old tv, but I mean something more curated, like the best episodes of the most forgotten shows, or the best Ed Sullivan or Johnny Carson shows, etc. Oh god, I just had a daydream where I was paid to go to the The Paley Center for Media (formerly the much better named Museum of Television & Radio) to unearth forgotten treasures. They could even do something like my previous post, the best Christmas episodes.

A weird model shoot on the corner of Hudson and Canal. I say weird because it was raining a little, and everyone but the model was huddled under individual plastic sheets like some sort of stealth film crew. It also wasn’t obvious just what the model is supposed to be selling. Nice light though.

Stacy Horn

I've written six non-fiction books, the most recent is Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York.

View all posts by Stacy Horn →

4 thoughts on “TV and Reruns and Couldn’t They Do Something Better with that Airtime?

  1. OK, I’ll be showing my age now but do you notice how nothing “goes” together anymore? What the hell happened to matching one’s purse and shoes?? (not that I ever do it, but still…) Whatever happened to looking “put” together insted of “thrown” together?

    There is so little on TV these nights that yesterday I found myself watching an “Ink Master” marathon. But at least a cable channel here in Canada (CTS – Christian Television, perhpas?) has started showing nightly episodes of The West Wing. I keep waiting for a Christmas one…

  2. And I have even less to choose from as I pulled the plug on cable and just have whatever is available via rabbit ears (don’t feel sorry. I pull in 22 different channels – 3 different PBS, a movie channel, a channel that plays nothing but 80’s music video, etc).

    I’ve got plenty to read on my Nook including an Irish mystery writer who is wonderful – Tana French – whom I highly, highly recommend if mysteries are your sort of thing.

    Besides, Stacy, you’re in NEW YORK CITY! My city of dreams where you get to see models who dress very, very badly while the fashion magazine editors try very hard to convince us that it is *the* way we all should be dressing. I’m never going to see that here in Greensboro. Much better than anything on TV.

  3. I suppose that the TV braintrust figures that folks are involved with holiday stuff and not concerned with TV viewing.

  4. Nora, I never liked matching shoes and purses, and things like that, but I want complementary colors, and some reasoning behind mixing it up. That’s out the window now. Some people pull it off, most young people do certainly, but yeah. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to this outfit.

    Yeah Karen, it’s fun just walking around. Dave, they are not even showing any of my favorite holiday shows!!

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