Quote:

* Quoth das Monkey *
Wow ... when do you find time to sleep?

das

The irony in this post is that you didn't do it at 3AM.

I'm going to tune in for the shows leading up to it on TV Land. Classic 80s shows are the best! (although I must admit that I was never a fan of Lauren (Cox) on Family Ties).

I don't think I've ever seen a network go so far out of their way to not get ratings. The worst part of this is that an episode of Green Acres (a true TV classic, unlike Friends) won't run during this cycle of episodes because of the blackout (and a TV Land Moguls rerun the next day).

Eh, maybe I'll TIVO the Friends finale and watch TV Land going dark live.

I watched one episode of "Friends" and found it to be very annoying. It amazes me that people like this show. Even more amazing is that this group of mediocre at best actors were pulling in a million an episode.

Well certainly not as important as the good folks at NBC would have us believe.

The TV Land coverage has started. I find this more fun that the actual Friend's finale! Ferris Bueller is on right now (at least here in the east time zone). I don't remember this show at all, it is pretty wacky.

Too bad they didn't show the pilot episode of Ferris where (if I remember correctly) he pulls out a cardboard stand-up of Matthew Broderick and then cuts its head off with a chainsaw and proclaims that tv is the real deal heh.

Ok, this is just fascinating. The TV Land staff is literally just watching a TV set. This is hilarious!

There's something that always bothered me about sitcoms - the laugh track. The audiance laughs at every single freakin' joke, regardless of whether or not it's actually funny. I've often wondered if there are people out there that are like this while watching shows. The answer is yes - and they are all employed at TV Land.

The staff does laugh at every joke, but it's the most forced, uncomfortable laugh I've ever heard. Not only that, but the staff has the most glazed-over look on their faces. I suppose that all of this is because cameras are on them, but I have to wonder why they keep incouraging people to change channels. Why should I waste an hour of my time watching a "modern classic" that their staff doesn't even seem to be enjoying?

Also, the programming has sponsers. I really need to question the advertiser's logic in sponsering TV Land. They're advertising for programming where the staff is encouraging people to change the channel. Talk about flushing money down the toilet.

Did anyone get screencaps of TVLand? I forgot to check in on it.

It was pretty fascinating. Did you watch the credits? They had "writers" for this thing. It was hard to tell if it was part of the setup or not, but was that one girl in the middle really annoyed at the "change the channel" dude? He was interrupting actual show time. And, damn, that one kid wouldn't stop eating. From the popcorn to the chips to the donuts (I guess that's what they were) back to the chips. You could tell he'd been dragged there just to fill the 3 male / 3 female quota.

I have to agree with Zuul in that I was a bit disturbed with how glazed-over their faces were. I just dismissed it as the uncomfortable nature of watching a TV show on camera, but it was odd. And their laughing seemed as forced and robotic as John Kerry trying to tell a dirty joke. They really didn't seem all that amused at anything happening during the show.

Overall, it was just really weird. I'm glad I saw it.

das

I'm also curious to see what this show looked like.

Were they actually watching the show, though? I flipped back and forth between the two, and the difference in what was heard on TV Land and what was showing on NBC seemed much greater to me than any delay could reasonably explain. The sound seemed to be purposefully muffled as well.

The sound would be muffled for copyright reasons, but I too wondered what they were really watching and if it was prerecorded. Weird ...

das

I watched a few minutes of the TV Land bit, and it seemed to me like a loop of muffled dialogue. I could recognize the muffled voices of Matt LeBlanc(sp?) and Lisa Kudrow, but the sounds were recycled in the short time I was watching. Made them seem like the adults in a Peanuts special. What was also weird was that the program was closed-captioned. Someone was paid to come up with (LAUGHTER), (CHUCKLES), and (INDISTINCT) probably once or twice every five minutes.

Interesting make-up of the supposed "viewers," too. Three male, three female, kinda like "Friends"...but something about them was different...