Broadcast radio and television have 2 major flaws: most of their programming is substandard, but when they do run old shows they ruin it with excessive commercials. There is such a dearth of quality shows. So the other morning when I happen to catch The Exorcist on AMC, I watch it (who doesn’t like a good demon possession movie?). As I have taken to doing lately I check to see what the length of the movie is compared to how long of a timeslot they put it in. In this case the movie is 122 minutes long in a 165 minutes time slot. I think, okay, 2 hour movie with 45 minutes of commercials. That’s fair. Not great, but fair. But then I recently found out you can’t just go by those 2 numbers.

They start commercials early and comeback late. They completely eliminate the credits and run station promos over the top. So to satisfy my curiosity I put a timer to it. Very interesting. It started out great, 14 minutes of movie and 5 minutes of commercials. I can live with that. Then as the movie wore on it got worse and worse. By the end they were showing 7 minutes of movie and 5 minutes of commercials! That’s bullshit. When I did the tally they had taken off 12 minutes of the movie, and had a total of 57 minutes of commercial. And of course the people who made the movie, never got their credit at the end. Its maddening!

Radio does the same thing. These 2 Bozos in the morning, ‘Redeye Radio’ run 16 minutes of show in a half hour (15+1), and 14 minutes of news and commercial. That’s basically representative of all talk radio. What this says to me is they don’t think much of their customers. Their contempt is so great I’m waiting for them to go ‘overweight’ on commercials (more commercials in an hour than show). They’re close now. Rush has done it in the last year. He’s taken to reading these ‘live’ commercials in the middle of a broadcast period. Sean Hannity may have done it too. The reason they can get away with it is there is basically no competition, they’re all bad!

Radio was destroyed some years back when indie’s were forced out and they were all swallowed up by 1 mega-corporation. The first one I knew of was Clear Channel. They were bought out by iHeart Radio. Steel sharpens steel, and when there is no competition they get fat and lazy. And that they have. The same thing can be seen in television. In the old days there was a respectable amount of local programming. A way for the local affiliate to standout, make a name for themselves. That’s all gone. Now its network or nothing. They whole country sees the same crap. Homogenization. Their own programming tells them nothing.

The explosion in ‘retro’ channels isn’t telling them anything. No one’s buying into their new crap. But they’re not listening. What I’m really waiting for is to see if the consumers ever wake up to the fact they are being spit on by the broadcasters? Primetime network television (at least the 3 majors) isn’t quite as bad as radio yet, but they’re working on it. And the “off” channels, the AMC, USA and others are already there. Its a wasteland. You just never know when people are going to wake up, or not. The sliver of good shows, whether radio or TV, cannot be more than 10% of the total, then they ruin that!

[On a side note I find it interesting how The Exorcist really grew on me in its nearly 50 year existence. I looked up and found out it was mostly filmed at Georgetown University in DC. Simply beautiful exteriors with the beautiful fall they had that year. The ominous foreboding of the score. Linda Blair. A quality performance by Ellen Burstyn and Lee J. Cobb. But the one that has really grown on me is Jason Miller’s portrayal of Father Karras. Without him I don’t think the movie becomes the classic it has. He went between writing and acting during his career and died at the way too young age of 62. IMDB cast listing is so crazy. He is listed 6th, and Linda Blair is listed 7th! It doesn’t seem to be alphabetical, it doesn’t seem to be by screen time, it doesn’t seem to be by anything!]