Channel 4 Programming Rant

Since the beginning of last week (9th November) my early morning routine has been destroyed by the removal from the Channel of the repeat of the programme at about 6.00 a.m. This was the ideal time for me as it was light, fun and a good way to get my brain going for the day. 5 times a week I arranged my life to accommodate this and now it's stopped - I'm devastated. It had everything to get my brain going in the morning; not the least of which was the challenge of trying to beat the contestants (which most of the time I did - courtesy of having lived 10 years with a truly immense Scrabble player (entered the nationals twice, once winning it and the other coming fourth).



So, for the first time in my life I've complained about a TV programme - or rather the lack of it. I guess it won't affect anyone else and it may bring me further back into line with the rest of the human race by allowing my body clock to move round by an hour! Channel 4 have been trying to dump Countdown (God knows why - some hairy, spotty little oik of a 'creative' executive thinks it doesn't fit the Channel's 'image', no doubt), as they've been bouncing it around the early morning schedules so that the start time varies by about 45 minutes. But I'd got used to checking the schedule. Sigh.

16th November: That was fast! All credit to Channel 4, they responded very quickly, even if they did think I was complaining about the re-scheduling of The Treacle People (!?!) - having cleared up what I was ranting about, they told me that it wasn't being repeated because of a scheduling decision.

Really, what can one say? Of course it's not being shown because of a scheduling decision - asinine numbskulls. Did they think that I thought they'd mislaid it? "Oh, terribly sorry and thank you for pointing out that we'd forgotten to include it in the schedule at that point." Plonkahs.

And what has usurped the position? St Elsewhere - what appears to be a very dreary soap shot in monochrome, it looks like a sort of House without the edge of seat anarchy and humour. Not what I want to wake up to on a cold winter's morning. They tell me that they've passed me complain on to the person responsible. Oh yeah ;-(