Week in review

Hmmm, I've been a bit slack recently, but to be honest I have had trouble thinking about things to post on. It isn't that nothing has been happening to me, just that I had a lack of motivation to document the fascinating details of my daily life.

Normally I would have something to rant about by this point, but apart from a few irritating things nothing has really ticked me off this week. I have been meaning to vent about commercial television screwing people around for a while, so now is as good a time as any I suppose.

I truely believe that whoever is in charge of the major networks holds the general public in very low regard. I am probably particularly targeted, as a fan of 'fringe', 'cult' or 'nerd' shows such as Stargate, Buffy or Futurama. Because shows like this hold a smaller but very loyal following, the networks feel comfortable changing days ('special new day'), timeslots ('at the brand new time'), stop at a random point in the middle of a series ('that was *cough* the end of this season...') or randomly show repeats to stretch it out ('eh, noone will notice').

Of course, they also do that crap on more popular shows such as House or Greys Anatomy (House has seen regular repeats during this year, and Greys Anatomy stopped in the middle of a series last time it was on). I just don't understand why they think they can get away with it, I feel insulted every time they run a repeat, show a 'special movie length episode' or put something on at a 'special new time'.

In fact, I've stopped watching Stargate, my favorite still running show, as I am just sick to death of the shabby treatment of fans by Channel 7. Now I just wait for them to come out on DVD and watch them on my own time, without interference from the Networks. I can see myself doing that with most TV actually, if things don't start getting better.

Similarly, I got tired watching Lost week by week, and while they haven't been screwing around with it because it is so damn popular, it is all symptomatic of the problems with commercial television, now that a better option is available. Watching TV shows on DVDs is just fantastic as far as I'm concerned, and for the less scrupulous it is now possible to download excellent quality shows at about 150-350mb per episode, no longer an insane figure thanks to even australia's sub-par broadband networks. Not that I would ever condone that of course, which is why I definitely haven't been watching advanced episodes of Lost in my lunch break, thanks to the USA being 2 months or so ahead of us. Nope, not me!

Well, stay tuned. Next week I should hopefully have an update on our house-selling saga. Could the end be in sight?