Tuesday was a bittersweet day for my future TV watching. First of all my cable company, Insight Communications, made the decision to discontinue the availability of the Game Show Network (GSN) to its customers.
The feedback they received from it must have been extensive because when I called to complain there was a special recorded message explaining the economic reasons for the decision.
Seems the "wise" programming decision makers at Insight made the change because of the cost of the cost to the company to import the GSN signal. Of course those extra costs would have to be passed on to the customer. So in the interest of not increasing our price for cable the decision was made arbitrarily to stop carrying GSN on the cable system. Well thank you for making that decision for me. Goodness knows I wouldn't have been able to make that decision for myself.
I know it's only a TV channel but I really enjoyed GSN. It really helped me get through the time I was unemployed. It brought back a lot of my old TV game show friends. Hosts like: Dick Clark, Gene Rayburn Bill Cullen Burt Convey, and Tom Kennedy. I got to revisit with the celebrity panelists from shows like: The Match Game, $100,000 Pyramid and Password.
While only a peripheral element in my TV time since I've been back to working on the day shift GSN was still always (much to the dismay of my wife) my "go to" channel when nothing else was on.
Well I guess I can't fight the cable company so I'm just going to have to learn to live without the Game Show Network. I will miss it.
The good news about Tuesday is that my favorite show, ABC's "Lost" returned for its 6th and final season. I have been waiting since last May for this. The show is one of the most intriguing and engaging programs I've ever seen on TV. It's mystery, continuous plot twists, conflicts, romantic triangles and character development has kept me interested since I first started watching it back in 2005.
The 2 hour premiere answered some of the cliff hanger questions asked the ending of last season as well as some of the long running ones from seasons past. But just like "Lost" always does, it also spawned many new ones.
There's some kind of parallel timeline running now and I'm not sure what it means. I guess that's the issue that's going to be the main plot this season. Then there's the newly discovered Temple and it's group of leaders who live behind a large fortress of a wall in fear of "the smoke monster." That story line reminds me a lot of the native village in the movie "King Kong".
Anyway I'm glad that "Lost" is back and that I have a TV show to look forward to enjoying every week at least for 24 more episodes.
So I guess Al Burton, Gloria Loring and Alan Thicke were right when they wrote the Theme to the old NBC sit com. "You take the good and you take the bad. You take them both and there you have the facts of life"
Let me conclude this post by suggesting you get a mental picture of Dana Carvey from Saturday Night Live doing his best impression of President George Bush (the first one) as he's saying these words:
"Losing Game Show Network, BAD! Having "Lost" back on the air GOOD!"
Will my life change much because of either of these events? No, it's just television. Will I be in a bad mood because I can't see Family Fued or Match Game any more? I could but let me bring back Dana Carvey as President Bush to your mind again as I end by replying:
"Not Gonna Do It!"
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