Girl, Interrupted

Pet Peeve number 581:

When a television show is preempted for a sports game. Not even a big game, a pre-season game. This happened twice this week.

Thursday Night
The last episode of ABC’s addictive reality show, “Hooking Up” which follows 11 women through the maze of online dating in New York was replaced by a San Diego Chargers pre-season game. An angry Christina requests I TIVO the last 45 minutes and wonders if they would air it again at a later date. ABC isn’t cable, they won’t air it again. DVDs can be purchased at the ABC online store. But, it’s not worth the money.

Saturday Night
After returning home from a work related BBQ, I’m excited to watch the Saturday installment of “Big Brother 6.” I click over to my “Now Playing List.” Wait a minute, the last episode listed is from Thursday! I click over to the Guide and realize that CBS aired a preseason game of the San Francisco 49ers playing some other team! Christina re-capped and I get updated through the awesome Big Brother hamster watch site. Seeing posted stills of Kaysar from the Big Brother Feed is not the same as watching him give away the Head of Household Challenge. Kasyar, how could you?!

Moving on, I have to mention another example of when the network or local station decided to air a sports game instead of regular programming. Flash back months ago and the Lakers are playing the Clippers. That same game was also played on Fox Sports West and KCAL 9 (the official Lakers channel in Los Angeles). Did they really need to air the game on the WB too? I return home from work and find that “Gilmore Girls” is not on. This was a pivotal episode of last season when Lorelai got into a fight with her mother. Okay, they do that every episode, but this one Lorelai was especially mean. Or so I heard. To make matters worse, the Saturday they were supposed re-air the episode was switched to Thursday. I had no idea and neither did TIVO.

What’s the point of ESPN, Fox Sports or the other dozen channels that air sporting events? I totally understand the big three networks airing finals or semi-finals. Just don’t interrupt regularly scheduled programming and put in games that can be easily shown on a SPORTS channel.