Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Stuff We Should Bring Back: " __ will not be seen tonight..."

Maybe they still make announcements when a network TV program is pre-empted--I seldom watch TV live these days--but I suspect the powers that be are wary of anything that would rob the parent company of 10 seconds of ad time it could sell. I mean, we don't even get full theme songs anymore.

Still, I miss the old days when after a commercial, you'd see a telop slide with a publicity still from the show that was about to be pre-empted. A network announcer would boom something like, "The Love Boat will not be seen tonight so that we may bring you the following special presentation." Maybe sometimes you'd get a reassurance that it would return next week at its regular time.

The best ones looked about 10 years older than they really were and maybe even seemed a little blurry at first glance. Often they wouldn't use an actual show photo, but a piece of artwork akin to something off the cover of an "Official Novelization" paperback.

This is the kind of simple yet charming little extra that made television fun back in olden times. I think we ought to bring it back.

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