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Infomercial "Roadblocking" on Four TV Stations in Same Area
- Thread starter retrothoughts
- Start date
MarcB said:anotherguy said:This may be semi-OT, but this past weekend CBS had no sports on Saturday or Sunday afternoons. WREG CBS 3 in Memphis took that opportunity to inflict viewers with nothing but infomercials all of both afternoons.They also did this on Father's day weekend and have done it on other weekends with no sports or a shorter afternoon schedule as well. This is proof of what would happen if the networks were to give up any more time on weekends.
Same as WFSB 3 in Hartford. They have the rights to good shows on the weekend, but air them after 11:35PM. Reruns of Cops, Criminal Minds, CSI Miami, and Inside Edition Weekend.
That sounds like WREG. They have Criminal Minds, Leverage, Inside Edition, and Entertainment Tonight, and only show them late Saturday and Sunday nights.
It used to be that WREG was the best station in Memphis about NOT filling time with infomercials. If there was any non-sports time on weekends they would fill it with reruns of MASH, Cheers, or Perry Mason. Even though they don't have those shows any more, surely there is something out of the syndicated shows they run during the week that they could use as filler. Instead they've become one of the worst stations in Memphis about running infomercials.
crainbebo said:
WREG had a great movie library well into the 80's and possibly early 90's, but I'd imagine they lost a big part of their rights when TCM came into existence.
crainbebo said:
I remember a few years back when the Milwaukee CW and MyNet Sinclair stations got flash flooded out of their master control, they passed through programs remotely from another MC in the Sinclair chain. About 95% of that consisted of Coach reruns
. If you were looking a for a cheap way to marathon the first three seasons of the show without buying the DVD's, that was the perfect way to do it.Thankfully on Sunday my CBS station just aired a whole bunch of movies instead of infomercials. Not good movies, mind you, but at least they weren't infomercials.
Infomercials guarantee income even though the ratings and shares are 0.0. I've seen the ratings for a station that showed four straight hours of 0.0 ratings and 0.0 shares, and they continue showing infomercials because they still generate income. Numbers like those for regular shows would get them canned. Welcome to the future.
PirateJohnny said:
Same for those inane shows like Daytime, The Morning Blend and others which feature talk that goes beyond fluff; they're only built to be demonstration grounds for local companies to sell their wares/clothing lines/construction services, and are profitable even if not a soul watches.
anotherguy said:MarcB said:anotherguy said:This may be semi-OT, but this past weekend CBS had no sports on Saturday or Sunday afternoons. WREG CBS 3 in Memphis took that opportunity to inflict viewers with nothing but infomercials all of both afternoons.
Same as WFSB 3 in Hartford. They have the rights to good shows on the weekend, but air them after 11:35PM. Reruns of Cops, Criminal Minds, CSI Miami, and Inside Edition Weekend.
That sounds like WREG. They have Criminal Minds, Leverage, Inside Edition, and Entertainment Tonight, and only show them late Saturday and Sunday nights.
It used to be that WREG was the best station in Memphis about NOT filling time with infomercials. If there was any non-sports time on weekends they would fill it with reruns of MASH, Cheers, or Perry Mason. Even though they don't have those shows any more, surely there is something out of the syndicated shows they run during the week that they could use as filler. Instead they've become one of the worst stations in Memphis about running infomercials.
They don't produce syndicated weekend first run programming like Siskel & Ebert or American Gladiators anymore
anotherguy said:MarcB said:anotherguy said:This may be semi-OT, but this past weekend CBS had no sports on Saturday or Sunday afternoons. WREG CBS 3 in Memphis took that opportunity to inflict viewers with nothing but infomercials all of both afternoons.
Same as WFSB 3 in Hartford. They have the rights to good shows on the weekend, but air them after 11:35PM. Reruns of Cops, Criminal Minds, CSI Miami, and Inside Edition Weekend.
That sounds like WREG. They have Criminal Minds, Leverage, Inside Edition, and Entertainment Tonight, and only show them late Saturday and Sunday nights.
Some stations don't even air anything after the news or network programming on Saturday and Sunday nights, KSHB goes straight to infomercials after SNL and the Sunday Night Sports show. They would probably just air test patterns if the FCC banned infomercials. Some stations don't even maintain filler anymore. Infomercials are the new filler.
nomadcowatbk said:
I'd rather see the test patterns. :
The reruns and movies are syndicated as well, unless they happen to be public domain shows, so the local stations don't have the rights to show anything they haven't paid for. To me even PD shows or movies would be better than infomercials, but stations would rather make more money and have little or no viewers than show anything that might get more viewers but won't make as much money. So for a lot of stations the infomercials win out. Never mind the angry viewers who hate them. : :-\
:-\nomadcowatbk said:
They still produce first-run programs for weekend syndication, but network affiliates end up with the low-budget filler if or when they don't have network sports programming (Byron Allen interview shows, "What America Thinks," etc.). Many stations "bookend" weekend sports with infomercials, knowing that they might be able to get some sales from people who are too busy or lazy to change the channel.
Much of the better first-run weekend syndication ("Unsealed: Alien Files," "Bloopers") are on independent/CW/MyNetworkTV stations. I don't know if these shows have been renewed for 2013-14, though.
anotherguy said:The reruns and movies are syndicated as well, unless they happen to be public domain shows, so the local stations don't have the rights to show anything they haven't paid for. To me even PD shows or movies would be better than infomercials, but stations would rather make more money and have little or no viewers than show anything that might get more viewers but won't make as much money. So for a lot of stations the infomercials win out. Never mind the angry viewers who hate them. :
There are very few A- or B-list movie packages available in syndication anymore. The ones I can think of are from Sony Pictures, MGM, and Trifecta (Paramount). Many of them have been sold exclusively to cable networks.
There are other packages that consist of made-for-TV/DVD movies, but who would watch them?
For some reason I do enjoy those Time Life music collection infomercials probably because of the old video clips of artists that I never seen before.
It goes to show you that FOX is more on the ball than CBS. When they have no sports programming on Saturday or Sunday FOX 61 (at least in Hartford) shows a movie (sometimes two) and other programming. Same for their sister station WCCT-TV 20 (CW) when they're not showing The NY Mets games from The Mothership (WPIX/NYC) their showing movies and programs.
MarcB said:
That would be the local FOX and CBS affiliates. The networks don't air alternate programming if there's no sports.
PirateJohnny said:
Actually ABC has run shows that they're burning off on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, like Wipeout (Which could probably be considered semi-sports) and Million Dollar Mind Game, which was just mentioned in another thread. To me the networks running non-sports shows for filler, even if it's some of the same shows that ran on Saturday nights for filler or repeats of shows from earlier in the week on non-sports or slow sports weekends, would be better than just turning the time over to local stations that will do nothing but fill it with infomercials.
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