I’m Still Working!!!

Yeah, it's the Labor Day weekend, when most people are off work-yet, here I am, hard at work writing up a blog. Well, it's not THAT hard- but, it's still part of my work duties... Part of the duties of a newspaper used to be service to its readers. Among those services used to be providing a free weekly guide to the local television schedule. Well- not anymore.The Chicago Tribune has announced that it is doing away with the free weekly televison listings suppliment that would arrive with your Saturday Tribune.Instead, you can subscibe (yes- it means shelling out more money) to a rather impersonal TV guide...actually, the same one you can subscibe to through the Tribune's rival newspaper, the Chicago Sun Times. I always thought it was ridiculous, a few years ago, when both the Sun Times and Trib had a TV listings suppliment in their Sunday papers- and it was essentially the exact same magazine-even when the two papers were always trying to position themselves as better than the other, they opted to do the exact same thing- just as they obviously are doing now.Both really removed the local aspect of their suppliments years ago- no more articles about local TV happenings and personalities, as they used to do for years. Their "TV Mailbags" used to answer questions about local shows and people- but they instead went the way of a national syndicated column, with the same questions and answers appearing in both their suppliments,i.e.- "What happened to Marcus Slickhair from 'The Young and the Restrooms'? Of course, it's all money related- they didn't want to pay anybody to cover local TV, or do anything to provide a local and unique service to their readers...which is why they will now opt to provide the same impersonal listings as their competitor. I have to wonder- the Tribune is making this move, after trying to push their book section as a paid subscription deal? Is THAT going anywhere? Granted, you can now look up the TV listings in multiple places on the Internet- but I kind of enjoyed being able to take a look at what's ahead while perusing the weekend papers. The Trib will still provide their daily TV grid- but it only lists the evening shows.Also, many of the pay TV services that we subscribe to have listings you can check by pushing a few buttons- but it still doesn't seem as easy to look through a whole week's worth of programming, day by day. Am I the only one who cares about this? Maybe it's a sign of my age... Hopefully, the rainy remnants of Isaac haven't spread much gloom over your holiday weekend. I'm happy to hear from our viewers that they really enjoyed "Phantom of the Opera".It also seems some people can't scroll up or read- I had a few inquiries about whether it was the original Lon Chaney silent version.One corrspondent was actually indignant that we were running the Claude Rains version rather then the "far superior" silent version. I seem to be going in circles- we're back to "you can't please everybody"... Did you hear about an interesting TV developement for us Marvel Comics fans-that Joss Whedon, who brought us the really fun "Avengers" movie this year,has signed with ABC to develope a pilot for a series about SHIELD- the top secret organization that Nick Fury heads up.(I kind of doubt that Samuel L. Jackson will be a weekly player -so, how will they get around SHIELD's leader not being around?) It does seem like it could be a nice launchpad for some of the other Marvel characters, and create enough public awareness of them to help move them into feature films. I just wonder if the usual TV budgetary constraints might cause a problem...but, since I enjoy Whedon's work, I'm anxious to see what he comes up with. I'll be back here at work with another blog tomorrow-why not celebrate Labor day with a little labor?