I had given up some weeks ago from trying to watch Barnaby Jones or Canon in the mornings on MeTV KCCI channel 8.2 in Des Moines. But in order to have a post on a factual basis I had to put a stopwatch to it. First I looked up how long each episode was that they put in a 1 hour time slot in the 70s. Turns out the shows were 51 minutes long back then (amazingly the Andy Griffith type half hour show in the 60s was an unbelievably 26 minutes long). So when I put a stopwatch to it I found out they had now taken 15 minutes from Barnaby Jones, 6 minutes more than as originally shown. It wouldn’t even be so bad if they kept interruptions to a quarter, half and top of the hour. 4 big breaks instead of 7 little ones. Or if they just did commercials, instead of these mind numbing station promos.

But what were those missing 6 minutes? We’ll never know. I notice on other channels they cheat by not showing the closing credits. They roll them at the bottom in real tiny print then as soon as the show is over they go to the next ones, skipping the closing theme song and the readable credits. When I saw them do that on Gunsmoke (pictured above) and the Virginian, two really good theme songs, I realized what was happening. The 45 seconds or so it took to do the credits originally, with the moving theme song, allowed you to ruminate for a minute and let you process what you had just watched. Now its just boom and gone! With no time for reflection. I do hope people wake up eventually and see what’s going on.

The TV stations by how they broadcast a show, are saying just what they think of you.

[As another example 11/15 on MeTV, they just cutout the, “Goodnight John Boy!” at the end of the Waltons! Who does that? How is a TV station that dumb? 8.2 isn’t the only time thief in the Des Moines area, 13.3 is too. Partridge Family, originally a 25 minute show, is now down to 20 minutes at the WHO-TV affiliate. 5 minutes just gone! You’d think “artists” would be pissed about being hacked and butchered. Its no different than taking a razor blade cutting off 20% of an oil painting. How would that look? Taking an arm off a statue.]

(Watching 1 primetime network show last night, Young Sheldon, has revealed how bad that market has become! These are first run shows! Up to and including the season premiere 2 weeks ago. Their commercials were: 3+6+4=13 They are almost at half commercials! 13 minutes! Of a half hour show, its unbelievable. No credits, they are shrunken speed credits. There’s no where to go. What are they going to do next year? Go 15 and 15? Oh! Oh! I know! They’ll split screen it, run the show on half a screen and run commercials on the other.)

Watching this morning, there is literally nothing to watch. I finally ended up on 13.2, the constant local weather loop where they also announce birthdays. TCM is showing one of Glenn Ford’s horribly bad gritty urban youth dramas. The channels with the old fart shows I refuse to watch. The Weather Channel is doing one of their reality shows with obnoxious music. And the rest of the entire Mediacom Cable System is completely worthless.

“1-Adam 12! A 415 fight group with chains and knives!” That’s what I’m talking, one of the best shows made period. So I pulled out my Season One DVD set. The episodes are 24 1/2 minutes long. Tomorrow I’ll put a stopwatch to the hack job KCCI MeTV 8.2 does to them. After putting a stopwatch to it, my calculations is they have a total of 7 minutes of commercials and promos in the half hour show. Amazingly, that’s only a minute and a half more than as originally shown. Evidently where they do their worst, is as I originally said, in the wee hours. But once again it comes down to one basic fact. We wouldn’t have to miss 1 second of the show, if they just cut out some of the station promos.

Then on AMC they just had the ending of Vacation. The movie has that great version of Holiday Road, for the closing credits, but not on TV. Its actually a large part of the movie as it invokes wonderful nostalgia with the viewer. None of it, all gone. No credits.