41) "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant": Oh, come on! How could you NOT know? I'm convinced that this TLC show is bogus. Maybe one or two cases like this are legit, enough to fill an occasional special. But a regular series? No way!
42) WWE 24/7 not showing AWA footage: Vince McMahon apparently owns a bunch of old AWA footage and hardly does anything with it. To you non-wrestling fans, this is like if a TV channel had the rights to a bunch of cool old shows and just sat on them, or if a film/video company had video distribution rights to a bunch of old movies and never released them. Hmm, in other words, pretty much what happens in every sector of showbiz. Maybe I shouldn't be so worked up about this, especially since I don't even get WWE 24/7 anymore. Oh, well.
43) Food Network shows: They all make such awesome-looking food, food that I will never make. I'm not one of those "foodies" that watches a lot of Food Network, but I do resent flipping by, seeing something tasty-looking, knowing I will never have it, then going upstairs and getting some junk food before heading back down to watch sports.
44) "Your show has been canceled.": OK, so I MAY have been watching some HGTV with my wife and we MAY have watched the last X number of minutes of "Design Star." That's not important right now. What IS important is that this ridiculous catchphrase is what the host tells the eliminated contestant each episode. Apparently since the winner gets an HGTV show, see, that makes the catchphrase apt. Your show has been canceled? Clearly that's a tagline created just for the sake of having one. Let this entry in my list serve not merely as a rebuke to this particular competition show, but to all the lame competition shows that repeat the same cliches all across the dial.
45) "Deal or No Deal": Somehow, this annoying game show, bad enough in NBC primetime, infiltrated daytime syndication and GSN. It is now seen more than ever, and I still think it's lurking somewhere, waiting for NBC's new shows to fail so it can come back in and fist-bump its way into our consciousness. To me, the ubiquity of THIS, not the new Leno program, was the first sign that NBC had thrown in the towel. America, we have a long and proud tradition of idiotic game shows, but clearly we can do better than people choosing briefcases.
46) Homogeneity: No, this isn't a lame joke about Jai Rodriguez surfacing on GSN afternoons for some reason (though that does seem odd). See, I hear tell of the good, old days, when you could go to a different city and actually expect to see local programming that was characteristic of its area, something distinctive from what you'd see in another market. Nowadays, everything is the same, even the news is barely local, and cable is mostly just as bland and unsurprising as the broadcast television it originally spiced up.
47) But then again...(RTN): Of course, homogeneity isn't necessarily a bad thing if it means you at least get it right. I love the idea of Retro Television Network, and its model of letting affiliates program their own local channels from a selection of library programs sounds good in theory. In practice, it looks like all the RTN model offers is massive screwups in every market. Put old shows on the air, repeat, repeat again: Sounds simple, right? We're all rooting for RTN to get its act together, but when you see an episode repeat several days in a row, or several "reels" within an episode air out of order, well, you might feel like turning off the tube and burying your nose in one of those inky-looking things with the paper and the shiny covers.
48) Tyler Perry Broadcasting System: "House of Payne." "Meet the Browns." "Tyler Perry Interviewing People to Hype His New Movie." (I may be misremembering this last one) If this were a "Pyramid" category, it would be "Crap that dominates TBS' schedule." Any day now, I expect to see "Tyler Perry's $100,000 Pyramid," with the celebrities consisting of the castmembers of his sitcoms, and youneverknow, you just might see Madea turn up at some point. Remember when TBS aired "New Leave It to Beaver" and "Rocky Road"? Sure, that stuff was crap, too, but it was crap done by different people. I don't think any one man should have this control over TBS' primetime lineup, with the obvious exceptions of Jim Crockett, Ted Turner, and Andy Griffith.
49) "Twilight Weekly" on Reelz: A whole show about the "phenomenon" that is "Twilight." I haven't watched it yet, so I don't know if it's sponsored by Hot Topic and Cinnabon, but no matter what the show's presentation or quality, it feels like overkill. I'll bet it's the highest-rated thing on Reelz, which is somehow even more dismaying. What, Leonard Maltin's not enough of a draw for lovestruck teenage girls?
50) Gilad on Fit TV: Remember back when ESPN and ESPN2 used to show afternoon and early-morning fitness programs consisting of scantily clad women bouncing and twisting around? Well, if you tried to catch any of these fine productions, you always risked running into this guy and his faux-macho, male-dominated, decidedly UNsexy "Bodies in Motion." The guy seemed to actually care about exercise or something, when all many of us cared about was Leeann Tweeden. Well, the guy is back, and though Fit TV doesn't offer the same brand of "fitness program" that ESPN pioneered, his constant presence is a reminder of the disappointment many a male viewer experienced on seeing HIM running in slow motion.
And with that, we're done. This list of 50 reasons is "a mere bag of shells," but it's representative, and I feel it's a much more accurate portrait of television than "Rolling Stone's" 50 Best Reasons to Watch TV.
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