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Me-TV better option than TVLand
At the same time, TVLand also decided that America needs a two-hour visit from the Barone family every night. No matter how much you may love "Everybody Loves Raymond," you can't possibly love Raymond's dysfunctional family that much. Somewhere along the way, TVLand also stopped being fun to watch. The clever between-show banter disappeared along with old commercials. While those changes may have succeeded in drawing a slightly younger, hipper audience, it blew away an entire segment of older TV fans, even if history dictates they don't spend as much money on advertisers as their younger counterparts.
Enter Me-TV (Memorable Entertainment Television). The digital station, relatively new to the Pittsburgh area, has picked up many series seen on TVLand when it first came to cable, and frankly has done a much better job of packaging them. Consider its current prime time schedule: "Mary Tyler Moore," "Dick Van Dyke," "The Bob Newhart Show," "Cheers," "M*A*S*H" and "The Honeymooners." The six half-hour segments are perfect relief from reruns, summer reality shows and Pittsburgh Pirates rain delays.
Surrounding its prime time offerings are the usual suspects ("I Love Lucy," "Beverly Hillbillies") as well as unexpected series, including the pre-"Gunsmoke" show, "Marshall Dillon," "Dobie Gillis," "Cannon," "12 O'Clock High" and "Combat." And "Rawhide" is worth checking out again if only to hear that theme song.
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Still, if your idea of nostalgia dates prior to "Everybody Loves Raymond." Me-TV will fill the bill, and, for my two cents, is a vast improvement over RetroTV.
Even if your idea of nostalgia is the '90s, you may prefer Teen Nick to TVLand. The former channel last Monday unveiled a block of sitcoms aimed squarely at the generation that first sampled Nickleodeon - and are now old enough to stay up until the wee hours of the morning. From midnight until 4 p.m., Teen Nick has set up "The '90s Are All That," featuring, in order, reruns of "All That," "Clarissa Explains It All," "Kenan & Kel" and "Doug." I won't be losing any sleep over these shows, but, then again, the adults that wax nostalgic over "Kenan & Kel" probably didn't understand their parents' passion for "Chiller Theater," either.
So long, CDs
Here's some unsettling news for both generations. When the new Ford Focus rolls off the assembly line, it will be without a compact disc player. Ford says it will slowly discontinue the players from all of its vehicles as more customers move to MP3s and their smartphones for music. Ford says the Focus will be the first because its appeal is primarily to younger drivers. Can't imagine it will be too long before radios disappear, too. Then again, commercial-free driving can't be all bad.
Radio waves
WDVE bumped WKST-FM from the top spot in last month's Arbitron ratings, which pretty much quelled all that insider radio talk about classic rock losing its grip over the 'Burgh ... Pittsburgh Steeler Ryan Clark has been added to Sportsradio 93.7 The Fan lineup. Clark will co-host a weekly show with Andrew Fillipponi beginning Tuesday, Sept. 6, at 6 p.m ... A radio service has compared ratings for the online Pandora music service to those of terrestrial stations and, to noone's surprise, in the 18-34 age group, Pandora triumphed in average quarter-hour listeners in many of the top 10 markets. Guess removing radios from automobiles isn't that farfetched, after all.
Terry Hazlett covers TV and radio for the Observer-Reporter. He can be reached at snowballrizzo@aol.com
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