October 6, 2008

Andy Rooney Ruins My Sunday Nights

Every Sunday night I look forward to sitting down and watching the Amazing Race on CBS. It's one of my favorite shows on television, and I really enjoy winding down my weekend with it. Unfortunately, when I turn the channel to CBS at 8pm I'm inevitably greeting by that crotchety dinosaur Andy Rooney!

I know it's not Andy's, nor 60 Minutes', fault that the CBS Sunday lineup gets pushed back when the football games go long, but when I'm ready to watch the next leg of a race around the world the last thing I want to hear is Rooney ranting about umbrellas or bitching about newfangled watches (notice how he wears his face down, like a jerk).

Last night's Amazing Race didn't start until 8:30pm, about 30 minutes later than scheduled, which isn't a big deal, but I wonder how many other viewer's nights were thrown off kilter by its delayed start. People who wanted to watch a show on another network at 9pm had to choose between finishing Amazing Race or starting their new show. Audiences who DVR'd Race will probably be disappointed when they go to watch and find that the last (and most important) 30 minutes of the show didn't make it to the recording.

The other thing that I find peculiar is that while other CBS shows, like Survivor, are available online in their entirety, Amazing Race is only available in short clips that don't add up to the full episode. I'm surprised that CBS doesn't want to make their six-time Emmy-winning show more readily available to its fans. What gives?

I'm sure that there more important things to worry about in this day and age, but for a TV lover like me I am perturbed.

Related Things: