Wednesday, January 28, 2009

RTN=Return to Normal?

Well, the good news is, my local Retro Television Network affiliate is back on its local schedule, so I can once again turn there and know what is on at a given time. Yes, we kind of take that granted with most channels, but no so with RTN lately.

The bad news is the local schedule isn't always as fun as the national feed RTN's affiliates had been running in January. I'll miss shows like "Delvecchio" and "O'Hara, U.S. Treasury." Neither is a classic, but neither gets much exposure anymore, and if you want to find one of them on DVD, you're gonna have to go through a Google ad or some other non-Walmart path.

I'm curious if RTN is picking up where it left off before this mess started (I still don't quite understand it all, but there is a quick summary here) or where it's been this. I was enjoying "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" in sequence, and I think around the time the schedule went haywire, we were about to get to the fourth season--the beginning of the not-on-DVD episodes.

Time will tell, and it may be a long time, indeed. Last night when I checked on old Hitch, I saw a bunch of funky green lines. It was either the most avant-garde episode ever, some misguided attempt at an early tribute to St. Patrick's Day debauchery, or another reminder that RTN doesn't yet have his act together.

Yeah, I'm betting on the last one.

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