Every Four Years

Back when I was a kid growing up in Idaho, we didn't have a lot of technology. Our black and white television picked up two channels, a CBS affiliate and an NBC affiliate. If there was a popular show on ABC, one of them would air it (this is why I missed the first season of The Six-Million-Dollar Man).

Yes, we eventually got a color TV and two more channels (PBS and ABC). But that's it. Now I have a 250-channel package from Dish. But I've only put about 50 in my guide favorites. A lot of those 250 channels are shopping channels and pay-per-view movies. And still, there will be nothing worth watching on those fifty or so channels.

When I was a kid, I hated presidential election years. Why? A lot of my favorite shows got preempted for political news (the primaries), the party conventions, and of course election night coverage. All of that was on all four channels. (And I was pretty politically aware for a 12-year-old kid since my parents were active in politics.) And, on top of all that, one network would preempt my favorite shows for the winter and summer Olympics (this was years before they split them). And even if they weren't on a channel I wanted to watch, the rest of my family wanted to watch the Olympics. 

So I learned to hate presidential election years. Now I have 50ish channels to watch. But still, if there's something going on such as a presidential speech or a party convention, a lot of the channels will show it, leaving me with maybe 30 channels to watch. And they'll preempt Jeopardy! all the time.

How do you feel about your favorite shows being preempted? Let me know in the comments below.