TVSquad

I went through a very long period when I was rather addicted to the design and makeover shows on HGTV. I loved shows like Design on a Dime and Divine Design and that show where the woman shows you how to take an old hobby horse and recondition it so it can be used as a wine rack.

I don't watch them half as much as I used to, but I still like them. They're shows that actually show us how we can redo our rooms and homes easily and without spending a ton of money. I find shows like that useful. I might not do exactly what the hosts say, but they always give me ideas for something I might want to do in my own place.

I can't say that same about Designers' Challenge though. I think this might be the worst show on HGTV, and here's why.

When Lewis Black went off at the Emmys a couple of years ago about TV becoming obnoxious with the amount of information splayed on the screen, he hit the nail right on the head. Sad to say, things have not gotten better since that rant. In fact, they're worse. I don't know what's worse, the annoying pop-up ads on the television screen or the annoying pop-up ads on the computer screen. At least in the case of the latter, it's the equivalent of a commercial and -- somewhat -- understandable.

But when you're watching a television show and have to ignore the bug in the corner, then be subjected to a variety of pop-up promotions and reminders for shows you may or may not be interested in watching it's enough to make you turn off the set. I'd say it's enough to make you switch channels, but where can you go to avoid the intrusion? PBS?

No, this is not going to be another post about the shoddy umpiring or spittle analysis or any of the other on-field matters that have been going on in baseball since the playoffs began. No, we're on a TV blog, so I'm going to just talk about the things that have annoyed me about FOX's and TBS's coverage of the ALCS and the NLCS. In no particular order:

1. The Fidelity-sponsored Fox Trak. The pitching tracker, which shows if a pitch actually hit the strike zone or not, has been around for years. But, the flight of the ball has been to this point represented by a red streak and a dot. Now that Fidelity Investments is sponsoring the tracker, the red streak/dot combo has been replaced by a green streak/green arrow combo that mimics Fidelity's "stay on the line" series of ads. What financial guidance has to do with balls and strikes, I'll never know.

There are many phrases I hear on the news and in commercials that I find annoying, painful, and simply illogical. This is one of the worst offenders.

I was watching a commercial today for a bank and the woman in the commercial said that the bank was "the number one online banking web site." Which got me wondering: what's the number one banking web site that's not online?

I'm sure most of you are glued to your TVs for news of what happened to Air France flight 447, which disappeared over the Atlantic yesterday while en route from Buenos Aires Rio to Paris. Not only is any major accident like that a fascinating, newsworthy event, but the added mystery of the plane's disappearance makes the story even more compelling.

Some of you reading this may have friends or family among the 228 people on the flight, which makes this a personal tragedy for a lot of people. But if you listen to the news media, it seems like most of the people who have been potentially lost on the flight aren't such a big deal. After all, "there were two Americans" on that flight, you see, and, as far as the U.S. media is concerned, their loss is more of a tragedy than the loss of any of the others.

Whoever creates the promos for Lost needs to start coordinating things with the show's writers, or at least start watching the show. The last few Lost previews have made so many empty promises that I am considering hitting the Mute button on my remote when the ads come on. It should not be possible to over-dramatize the events on a show about plane crash survivors on a bizarre island, but ABC has achieved that feat.

Consider the commercials for last week's episode, "Stranger in a Strange Land." Viewers were told (in all caps and bold lettering, no less) that three big mysteries would be revealed during the episode. Did the show deliver on ABC's promise? Sure, if the meaning behind Jack's tattoos is a big mystery. If kinda, sorta finding out what happened the Cindy and the kids is a big mystery. I am not even sure if there was a third mystery; that's how inaccurate the promo was.

(Writers Note: This post is not about something I hate ON the television, it's about a particular type of person I hate that is caused by the existence of television. It was hard picking a category for it, so I went with the one I did.)

I was an English major in college. If you ever get the chance to be an English major, do it! It opens so many doors to your future: with your English degree you can teach English! Or, also, starve!

Being an English major, though, brought along with it one major annoyance: wannabe intellectual types who felt that since they read Keats or whatever, they were somehow better than the civilians who enjoyed Melrose Place or The X-Files.

As a red-blooded American male who has trouble relating to his father, I watch a lot of sports. That means I also watch a lot of sports related television. PTI, Around the Horn, Inside the NFL, The Sports Reporters, NFL Live, NFL Prime Time, Sportscenter, and even Jim Rome is Burning (but only when my wife is out of earshot - for some reason the sound of Rome's voice makes my wife very angry. She doesn't follow sports; I think it's just a gut reaction to smugness.) Thanks to TiVo, I watch them all, fast-forwarding past all the topics that don't interest me.

I had trouble sleeping the other night (there were sugar plums dancing through my head – angry, murderous sugar plums), so I turned to the best TV option I had available to me: TNT HD's replay of A Perfect Day starring Rob Lowe.

Here's the plot: lower middle class guy writes a book that becomes a best seller. As he climbs the economic ladder, he becomes a workaholic and is thus estranged from his family. A mysterious stranger then appears and helps him to realize that true happiness doesn't come from work and success, but rather from spending time with his wife and his improbably named daughter, Carson.

I watched the whole thing for the same reason I play with hangnails and follow Philadelphia sports teams – I secretly hate myself.

Three mountain climbers go up on Mt. Hood. They get in trouble, socked in by a storm. They call for help. There's a search party. One's found dead; the others are still missing.

Don't get me wrong; it's a sad story. I feel for the families of the men trapped on the mountain. But this doesn't feel like news to me.

Since climbing during any time of the year, much less winter, isn't exactly a risk-free activity, I'd imagine that one or two climbers get trapped on the mountain every year. So why has this incident been the top story on all the local and network news broadcasts for the last five days?

I've never been much a joiner. I wasn't on any sports teams in high school and I don't belong to many clubs or organizations. But I would join The Nancy Grace Fan Club and proudly wear their pin on my lapel before I ever "woo-hooed." (I think I've done it a couple of times in print, but only in a comical way.)

The woo-hoo. It's everywhere. It's not enough that Al Roker is standing in front of a crowd outside of The Today Show, the crowd actually has to do that long "wooooooooo-hoooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" every time the camera is even remotely pointed in their direction. The same with the daytime and late night shows. Whether it's The Tonight Show or The View or (especially) Oprah, the crowd goes crazy when the star comes out or a guest comes on. I mean, they even do it on Emeril Live, whenever he throws in garlic or hot stuff. And they applaud on Emeril's show and he has a band, which I think is bizarre too, but that's a whole other rant.

I can't even understand how people do it physically. I can't imagine any situation where I would be puckering my mouth and making this loud "woo-hoo" noise with a bunch of other people, or alone. I would think that a real, deserved "woo-hoo" is a rare thing, and should be used in very few circumstances.

My wife made me tune into the big finale of ABC's The Bachelor last night. I tried desperately to talk her out of it (something about the resulting dip in testosterone from being exposed to the show might harm our chances at conceiving), but she persisted.

Like Jesse Palmer, and (inexplicably popular) Bob Guiney before him, last night's "Prince" Lorenzo (a man who has less claim to actually being a prince than the musician Prince does) decided to opt out of going through with proposing to his choice. He did give her a ring, but called it a "family ring" instead of an engagement ring. This takes even more guts than the other Bachelors who went with the more promising "promise" ring nomenclature.

Don't get me wrong... I think everyone is entitled to a vacation, especially the hard-working folks at the comedy factories known as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. But it sucks when I tune into Comedy Central to get my late night fix and I see reruns. This is the situation I'll find myself in this week, as both shows are on vacation.

I can tell right away that TDS is a rerun; if the intro to the show doesn't show the date, it's a repeat. From there, there's a 95% chance that Colbert is also a rerun, so the entire 11 PM - 12 AM block is now available to me.

It's a weird feeling; without TDS/Colbert, I feel kind of adrift.

I don't know if it's the same in other local markets, but here in the Twin Cities promos for the upcoming local news broadcasts always include some teaser about the weather forecast that goes something like this:

Anchor: Just how cold is it going to get? And will we see any snow over the weekend? Tune in at ten and find out.

I can understand doing such a teaser if the station has an exclusive story or just scooped some recent event that none of the other stations have, but it's not like they're the only place where you can get weather information. There's the Weather Channel, there's the newspaper, and there's the freakin' internet, for crying out loud.

I hate it when a network, a star, or a producer refers to a TV show that "looks like a movie." Is this supposed to impress me? I don't really care if a TV show "looks like a movie," because I look for the actual content of the show (writing, stars, direction, etc) before I look at how it looks. Give me a good script that looks terrible and I'll take it over a formula show that looks fantastic any day.

Take Smith. The network (and more than a few TV critics and fans) kept saying it looked like watching a movie only on our TV sets. Um, yeah, only I think what people meant by this is that the cinematography in the pilot was good and it had some good explosions. Not a terrible show, but really, that's what it came down to.