An Open Letter To CBS
Dear CBS,
It happened again. We click over to CBS around 8:30 to start watching The Amazing Race only to find that 60 Minutes is just wrapping up and we are faced with the choice of cancelling other scheduled recordings so we don’t miss the second half of the program.
While I do not disparage 60 Minutes as an excellent news program (although not as good as Sunday Morning), it is not nearly as worth watching as The Amazing Race. Theres a good reason you put 60 Minutes in the non primetime 7:00 time slot - no one actually watches it. Especially during football season when its just the dinner break between the afternoon game and either the late game or prime time programming.
For whatever reason, you moved The Amazing Race to Sunday nights. I’m sure there was sound logic behind this. However, here in the 21st century, the age of Internet and DVRs, we don’t get our news from TV and we don’t watch live TV. The timing of the show is no longer relevant. I will watch The Amazing Race when it is convenient. I will not watch 60 Minutes, no matter when it airs (unless Charles Osgood and Bill Geist take over. Put Geist in charge of 60 Minutes and I’ll watch faithfully.) and I doubt many people ever do.
As a result, 60 Minutes becomes the perfect buffer program for football. I’m sure CBS carries NFL football because it pulls in a good bit of revenue, but the games are always allocated only 3 hours even though they frequently run long. Currently CBS simply bumps all programming back. This causes live-TV watching luddites to tune in at 8:00 for The Amazing Race, only to find a dry news program, which they either must endure, or check back in 15-20 minutes. DVR watchers just get screwed unless they start recording later programs…just in case. But at 9:00 we’ve got Family Guy on Fox and Desperate Housewives over on ABC. I’ve got 2 tuners but that’s still not enough to allow me to record Cold Case just in case a football game ran long..which almost always happens. These days, I’m happy to see Andy Rooney at 7:55 because it means Amazing Race didn’t get bumped.
There’s an easy fix - just overrun 60 Minutes. No one will notice. If football runs over by 20 minutes, just cut off the first 20 minutes of 60 Minutes. All the important prime time programming starts on time, and you sacrifice a few dozen Mike Wallace fans to satisfy far more Amazing Race fans.
Your pal, Troy