Monday, September 19, 2005

my TV wasteland

My flat (apartment) has a TV, but no cable or satellite - we're restricted to the over-the-air channels. There are five of them we should be able to get, but in reality we only pick up two.
One thing this means is I haven't seen a single college or NFL football game this year. This is quite a difference, considering the past four years I've made a living watching college football, and long before I was paid for it I watched as much as possible. I have to say I don't miss it, but that's mostly because I'm not reminded that it even exists - there is no coverage of any American sports here, although there were about 20 pages of rugby coverage in the paper this weekend. I am on a quest over the next few weeks to find a bar to watch the baseball playoffs - I know they're carried here, I just don't know which establishments will feel a need to switch it on.

The other consequence of only having broadcast TV is that my roommates watch some horrible TV. Every night there's a local show called Shortland Street, which is a prime-time soap opera. The only thing I've ever seen to compare it too was a short-lived show on MTV (I don't remember the name, and I'm only hoping it was short-lived. For all I know it's still going on, but I only saw it a few times late at night when I was in college).
Every time I accidentally came across the MTV show I was convinced it was a sketch parodying a soap opera, because the plot and production were that bad. I kept watching, waiting for the joke, until I gradually realized there wasn't a joke - MTV actually expected people to watch this, and I'm sure some people did.
Shortland Street gives me that feeling every night.

5 comments:

David said...

Was it Undressed? That show was so bad it was bad. So, I watched it.

Anonymous said...

re: football. you certainly aren't missing much from the broncos this year. grumble. their win against san diego was less than spectacular

daimon said...

It was Undressed. So I wasn't the only one...

Anonymous said...

I'd be more than happy to tape any game that appears on south florida tv and send you some newspapers from various locales if you'd like. just drop me an e-mail.

Anonymous said...

oh, and undressed ruled. especially when you were hungover.