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Crappy Hotel TV Report - Programming Edition

S

soundsandsports

We've talked about the lack of choice in hotels recently, so my question is...what's the oddest thing you've seen on TV while on vacation?

Without a doubt, as a kid I went to Panana City Beach, Florida with my family about four or five times from the late 80s to late 90s, and the one thing that stuck out like a sore thumb was turtle races on a Saturday morning in '91...after watching about five minutes of ONE race, my parents and I all came to the conclusion that the locals must have nothing else to do besides go to the beach!

Honorable mention goes to a trip in '93 or '94 when I saw an episode of the ill-fated "New Price Is Right" with John Davidson for the first and only time...I guess I figured out why that show didn't get cleared in Nashville...
 
Not to call it "odd", but I always marvel at how many Chinese and other Asian channels there are in San Francisco and Las Vegas. Frisco has a large Asian population, and I guess there are many Asian visitors to Vegas.
 
soundsandsports said:
We've talked about the lack of choice in hotels recently, so my question is...what's the oddest thing you've seen on TV while on vacation?

Without a doubt, as a kid I went to Panana City Beach, Florida with my family about four or five times from the late 80s to late 90s, and the one thing that stuck out like a sore thumb was turtle races on a Saturday morning in '91...after watching about five minutes of ONE race, my parents and I all came to the conclusion that the locals must have nothing else to do besides go to the beach!
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Was this one of the major network affiliates there, or the local tourist information channel? I know that there is a full-service (not an LPTV) over-the-air station in Panama City called "Beach TV," which airs nothing but local tourist information, so this must have been what you were watching.

The strangest thing I've seen in other markets was in 1996, on KFBT Channel 33 in Las Vegas, when they concluded a scheduled made-for-TV movie early, they aired the 1955 cartoon short "One Froggy Evening" in its entirety (they were a WB affiliate at the time), followed by a launch promo for The WB Network (which featured its original lineup, in which the show "Muscle" was featured, but had already been cancelled for over a year). That station just screamed out "small-time operation," but one thing's for sure, "Count Cool Rider" (the station's horror movie host and co-owner) is doing a better job these days building custom motorcycles in Vegas than he was in the TV business.
 
Eric Stein said:
The strangest thing I've seen in other markets was in 1996, on KFBT Channel 33 in Las Vegas, when they concluded a scheduled made-for-TV movie early, they aired the 1955 cartoon short "One Froggy Evening" in its entirety... but one thing's for sure, "Count Cool Rider" (the station's horror movie host and co-owner) is doing a better job these days building custom motorcycles in Vegas than he was in the TV business.
Click to expand...

And no doubt he's getting some face time on occasion on "Pawn Stars", restoring cars and motorcycles for the pawn shop.
 
Biggest surprise: seeing CBUT (CBC Vancouver) and CJON (NTV St. John's) in Cortez, Colorado at the Comfort Inn. The two stations are apparently rebroadcast via the local TV translator association.
 
Eric Stein said:
The strangest thing I've seen in other markets was in 1996, on KFBT Channel 33 in Las Vegas, when they concluded a scheduled made-for-TV movie early, they aired the 1955 cartoon short "One Froggy Evening" in its entirety (they were a WB affiliate at the time), followed by a launch promo for The WB Network (which featured its original lineup, in which the show "Muscle" was featured, but had already been cancelled for over a year). That station just screamed out "small-time operation," but one thing's for sure, "Count Cool Rider" (the station's horror movie host and co-owner) is doing a better job these days building custom motorcycles in Vegas than he was in the TV business.
Click to expand...

Speaking of Vegas, I forgot to mention the weekly new-age music show that aired on KVBC-TV (now KSNV) Channel 3 in '96 called "Giovanni's World of Music." I believe it followed "The George Michael Sports Machine" on the station on Sunday nights, and it just stuck out. This show was public-access material airing on a major network affiliate.
 
One of the oddest things (maybe not that odd, but odd to me anyway) is in Marietta, Georgia, where they run the Cobb County Channel 23 public access channel on the hotel cable systems at (at least) the Hawthorne Suites on Powers Ferry Road and the Courtyard by Marriott on Delk Road. (Haven't been to the Hawthorne since it went to heck in a handbasket, but I hear since Wyndham took them over things have improved greatly.)

Another slightly odd thing was (at the same hotels) the Weather Channel Weatherscan service. Obviously these two hotels were just piping in the local cable system instead of something like LodgeNet or DirecTV (which I see a lot). But Weatherscan came in handy one day in Marietta while preparing for a departing flight.
 
soundsandsports said:
Honorable mention goes to a trip in '93 or '94 when I saw an episode of the ill-fated "New Price Is Right" with John Davidson for the first and only time...I guess I figured out why that show didn't get cleared in Nashville...
Click to expand...

That happened to me too when I went to Albuquerque in the fall of 1994! I remember seeing that show and I think I even got upset because I thought that it meant that the then-current Price is Right with Bob Barker was going to end! I got the impression it was a local program, but then I learned that it just wasn't very popular. I think it actually did get cleared in Boston, but it only aired during the wee hours. Come to think of it, the current "Price is Right" on CBS is a lot like the "New Price is Right."
 
soundsandsports said:
Without a doubt, as a kid I went to Panana City Beach, Florida with my family about four or five times from the late 80s to late 90s, and the one thing that stuck out like a sore thumb was turtle races on a Saturday morning in '91...after watching about five minutes of ONE race, my parents and I all came to the conclusion that the locals must have nothing else to do besides go to the beach!
Click to expand...

Could this have been a local public access channel? They'd let anyone trained to use the equipment put anything on there, (still will where they still have it). The KKK had a show on the Kansas City public access channel
 
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