While I’m on the topic of Canwest’s stupidity I might as well as bring up another beef I have with them.
Like I said previously, Canwest owns multiple channels. They seem to think that this gives them an added benefit for profit but in the wrong way. The best way to demonstrate is to give an example and here’s as good an example as any:
A show—let’s say the Everybody Loves Raymond—normally airs on Global on Monday’s at 9:00pm. About a month ago ELR aired their SERIES FINALE, but did it air on the right channel at the right time? No. What did Canwest do? They took the finale of a 9 year old show and moved it to both a different channel AND time-slot. They put the finale on CH at 10:00pm so that they could air some reality show.
They have committed many other similar offences like always moving Friends from 8:00pm on Thursdays to 7:30pm so that they can air Survivor at eight; moving random episodes of Frasier and other shows to CH; and so on.
Not only is moving a venerable show detestable—especially when it’s to make room for crap—but they also don’t seem to understand that viewers have such things as VCRs and PVRs and such that they need to program in advance. People do not like to have to keep changing the programs to keep up with a networks greed, they want to “set it and forget it”.
Canwest is not the only moron in this arena either, it seems pretty much all Canadian networks are run by idiots. CTV recently moved the LOST SEASON FINALE from it’s normal time-slot to ANOTHER DAY! Instead of airing the finale on Wednesday, they aired it to Thursday so that they could air American Idol on Wednesday. Do they not realize that not only is LOST a massive ratings hit but that forcing people to watch it a day late would aggravate people to no end? Thankfully there are affiliates of American networks so we could still watch it on Wednesday on ABC (without simulcasting) so Canadians did not have to stand around the water-cooler the next day not being able to discuss it with those who have satellite.
(In this one case it was actually a good thing that CTV did such a stupid thing because had they aired it, we would have seen Canadian commercials simulcast and would have missed the American commercial informing us that Good Morning America would air a deleted scene the next day)