Late Night Rant

OK. I used to quite like snooker. Of course back then it was half an hour a week of Pot Black. I didn't even mind it when they started showing the highlights of the World Championships , a couple of hours at the weekend,but now they have to show every excruciatingly slow minute of every excruciatingly slow game of every excruciatingly slow match in the whole damned tournament.

No matter how that messes up their published schedules. 

Now I am well aware of this so I didn't try to use the video timer to tape tonight's Heroes. I decided to tune in five minutes before time and do it manually. The snooker was due to end at 9:40 to be followed by an hour documentary about rock singers which in turn should be followed by Heroes at 10:40.

At 10:35 there was still snooker on. I left the commentary turned up in case they mentioned when Heroes was going to be on. The game on the table seemed to have just started, most of the reds were left. Imagine my surprise when the commentary indicated that it had already been going for forty-four minutes of "safety play".

Nevertheless I left it on. I figured they would postpone the rockdoc and jump straight in with Heroes when it finished.

Well it finished at 11:10, a mere hour and a half after the scheduled time and then, no great surprise, cut to the studio for ten more minutes of analysis.

I reached for the Video control (I want to go to bed, I can watch it later) and lo and behold, with no mention of Heroes at all, up pops that documentary. I've set the video going to tape for four hours, just in case it's on, but I'm guessing it won't be.

Heaven knows when it will be on. There's a scheduled repeat in the wee small hours of next Friday but the repeats are cancelled more often than they are shown.

Why on Earth do they bother buying series and scheduling them if they are just going to arbitrarily chop them with no published date for reshowing?

The most bizarrely galling thing of all? It's the last bloody episode! Knowing the BBC it could be months or even years before they get back to it.

Thanks BBC. Thanks a lot.

P.S. To forestall any possibility of comments suggesting I watch one of the endless showings on BBC  3 or watch it on the internet, you may be surprised to know that there are still some of us who have no digital TV channels and don't have the internet bandwidth to use it as a TV substitute.