In Canada we had the Test Pattern as the channel shut down for the evening (usually along with the national athem playing cause people always liked to sing just beofre going to bed) as there was not always 24x7x365 programming available. And Yeah that beep would wake up the dead !

Yeah, I remember now, we had that. I always missed it because I had got drunk at the pub and fallen asleep.

Something to help you reminisce, DB

Haha, thanks, bookmarked it.

[K-9]

All those reality shows are so annoying. I don't care about Hulk Hogan and his family, or Danny Bonaduce. I blame MTV and it's stupid Real World for starting those abhorrent shows where different people are brought together to live in one house. Utter crap and a complete waste of several minutes in your life.

Anyone in the US also notice that BBC America is just about as useless as a channel with all informercials 24/7? I mean this channel use to have good British comedies and actual shows like Robin Hood from the UK, now all it has are Gordon Ramsay and life based shows! You can't even find a real TV show on it anymore! It's become my absolute worst channel.

All those reality shows are so annoying. I don't care about Hulk Hogan and his family, or Danny Bonaduce. I blame MTV and it's stupid Real World for starting those abhorrent shows where different people are brought together to live in one house. Utter crap and a complete waste of several minutes in your life.

Anyone in the US also notice that BBC America is just about as useless as a channel with all informercials 24/7? I mean this channel use to have good British comedies and actual shows like Robin Hood from the UK, now all it has are Gordon Ramsay and life based shows! You can't even find a real TV show on it anymore! It's become my absolute worst channel.

They use to have a show that helped people redo parts of their yards and stuff too.
Even HGTV went to the crappy type reality as far as home stuff. Miss the old shows like New Yankee and Paul James. Seems Food Network has done the same crap because it's cheaper to produce.

What happened to TV?

[lithos]

Even HGTV went to the crappy type reality as far as home stuff. Miss the old shows like New Yankee and Paul James. Seems Food Network has done the same crap because it's cheaper to produce.

What happened to TV?

Oh, yes. I hate those bloody home-renovation shows on a scale that's nearly inconceivable.

Why? I was renting in Brisbane during the Great Aussie Property Boom of the Mid Noughties, and you could barely walk a suburban block without seeing several yuppies with a skip out the front, a hammer in their hands and wearing a pair of last season's jogging shorts and a look of supreme over-confidence, trying to hang a door that cost less than the jogging shorts. The bottle-blonde woman, and her effete partner.

All papers said it was a direct resulting of Backyard Blitz and all that crap. Suddenly, everyone within a stone's throw of a hardware store is Bob the bloody Builder.

Oh, the logic. The guy on TV said it'd be easy, they did it in a weekend (yeah, with a forty thousand dollar cash budget and enough behind-the-scenes help to fill an aircraft carrier.) Surely if some blue-collar bozo who left school in grade ten can cut a mitre joint, so can someone with a masters degree in advertising and who's now regional vice-assistant manager of sales can do it better, right?

You know what? It takes skill to hammer two pieces of wood together properly, without marking the wood or splitting it, or bending the nail. And when it comes to something like making a new window, well, it's get exponentially more difficult.

I moved into one, after the bubble inevitably burst. It was cheap, too, because the market was flooded with poorly-renovated houses everyone was looking to make a quick buck on. There was plenty of paint on the windowpanes - people forget where masking tape gets its name. The sliding door to the balcony? They'd got a door that fitted precisely in the gap. The door fit precisely. Just the door. The rails it ran on were not figured into the equation. Door was permanently stuck. The pavers in the backyard - freshly laid! - were already sinking when I got there. The garden gate was falling apart. The walls had fresh paint, but no one had bothered to strip the old layers, or even fill where the old paint had peeled from the walled. The "feature walls" (I can't stand that phrase) were vomit-green, which, I admit, perversely suited the beige normal walls. Again, no masking. Bathroom sink was loose from the countertop.

It was cheap, I should be thankful for that. But the moral of the story is: hire tradies to do it properly. And if you think you're too good for them, find out how much they earn...

Yeah it's not like any of the stuff they do will last. At least with shows like This Old House they did it right. I love the home renovation, gardening shows. But surely not the crap they have on now.

And they use stuff that will never last outdoors.

[lithos]

I like it when they lay a concrete slab on a show with a gimmick that they've gotta have it done in three days.

In fact, there was a proto-renovation reality show shot here in Tamworth, where they were renovating the local PCYC (Police Citizen's Youth Club.) Hosted by Angry Anderson. Three storey building, to be gutted and redone within a week as a charity project, this was back in the mid nineties and I remember watching it on TV then.

The redid the concrete floors...and the rest of the show consisted of them milling about while they asked "Is set yet? Is it cured? Can we do anything on it? Oh, the tension!" This was before reality TV had evolved to the stage of "never show your mistakes."

And then, as soon as the show ended, no one spoke a word of the PCYC. It dropped off the radar. For about ten years. It stood empty and useless, as the TV channel and the sponsors packed up with speed only brought about by embarrassment. The local council, I think, actual forbade the building's use on safety grounds.

Those ten years were what it took to raise the funding to do it all properly.

[ve2vfd]

My biggest annoyance on TV is Oprah for supporting pseudo-science, whack-jobs and woowoo.

I realize she does a lot of good in the community doling out tons of money and resources, but any time she supports pseudo-science nut cases on her show she does the world a disservice.

Pat