Man, I’ve been sick as a dog over Christmas. I was so delirious from fever I actually thought for a moment that, starting Jan. 19, CTV had scheduled the performance show of American Idol to air Wednesdays on CTV and then–in order to avoid a conflict with their simulcast of The Big Bang Theory–they had bounced the American Idol results show the following day over to their regional /A channels. You know, the channels they tried to sell for a dollar just last year? Crazy! I know! Imagine if any programmer ever did that. Not only would they piss off their audience (especially the older viewers who tend to watch Idol), they’d also lose all the Hi-Def viewers since /A isn’t available on hi-def. Canadians, though, could finally get American commercials on the Fox hi-def feed Thursdays so that might be cool.
CTV has treated /A like the free space in Bingo all season, flipping Two and a Half Men back and forth about as often as Charlie Sheen stumbles in and out of rehab. Neither seems to impact the show, with Two and a Half Men drawing close to two and a half million in a recent CTV outing.
This is a bit different–starting a show on one channel and ending it the same week on another. I guess if you’re going to play Where’s Waldo with a TV show, pick one as conspicuous as American Idol.
Still, Idol goes into this season with plenty of question marks, with Simon gone and Steve Tyler and J-Lo as judges. This is no time to make it a bit tricky to find.
CTV is betting viewers are savvy enough in 2011 to find it, whether its on CTV, /A or at CTV.ca. Or they think the show is damaged goods and is not worth airing twice a week on the same channel. The answer in a few weeks.
1 Comment
i don’t think it’s that big a deal. they can make sure to tell viewers regularly that the results will be on the other channel…it’s not like it’s switching to a channel that’s not readily available to viewers, it’s still an OTA channel. plus, with people having their digital boxes, it’s not exactly difficult to find a show on a different channel these days.
as for the HD feed, IDOL isn’t really the kind of show that gets that much of a benefit from HD, in my opinion (particularly the boring results show!)
and as for American commercials? *yawn* it’s not the super bowl 🙂