My New Year's Eve Marathon-athon

Ah, pay TV. Were it not for pay TV, I would literally have a single channel - the local ABC affiliate. And with the cancellation of Boston Legal (see the Popular Content, at the top-right), that leaves only Life on Mars, which I haven't been able to find for about a month now. Of course, there is never anything worth watching on TV during the weekends - I don't care how many channels you have. I literally have 1000+ channels (several are satellite radio stations, but hey - that's entertainment content, so it counts) and never have anything to watch on the weekends - but I digress...

If you have pay TV, you are intimately familiar with the marathon - there's at least one on some channel or 12 every, single day. Holidays bring out the real programming genius in the suits and executives who run these networks; I defy you to find anything but marathons on holidays. And so it is with New Year's Eve, 2008.

I was going to go for True Blood, but I watched every episode like three times when they first aired, and discussed them here (see the True Blood tag on the right), so I'm covered there. Instead, I settled for South Park. It's over at Midnight (Happy New Year, 2009!), at which point the TV is scheduled to switch-over to the Entourage marathon. At the end of that, I will catch the last two episodes of True Blood - if I'm still up - and then it will be something like 7am.

What am I missing - e.g., what else is there to watch?

Well, there's the Elf marathon - that's right: 24 straight hours of Elf, which makes sense because it's New Year's Ev... no, it doesn't make any sense at all. There's the Yard Crashers marathon or the Clean House marathon. I could switch to The Surreal Life marathon, but even if I were being paid, I don't really think I would.

Further up the dial, there's the CSI marathon (there's one of those literally everyday); Sci-Fi has The Twilight Zone marathon, as usual; TNT is playing Walking Tall five or seven times, after which they're going straight into a Law & Order marathon (again, that's everyday programming). TRU has a Speeders marathon, while TBS is showing a Tyler Perry's House of Payne marathon; CHILLER is showing a Freakylinks marathon, while A&E continues its Dog the Bounty Hunter marathon opposite BIO's Ripley's Believe It or Not marathon.

National Geographic has a marathon of Dog Whisperer, while SCI is running a Survivorman marathon against the Military Channel's World's Deadliest Aircraft marathon, a few channels away from ID's Most Evil marathon and PLGN's Living with Ed marathon.

Disney is doing Totally New Year's Eve against [adult swim]'s Moral Orel marathon (right after Cartoon Network's 6teen marathon) - or there's a Spider-Man marathon on Toon Disney. WGN's got a Honeymooners marathon. Someone at SLEUTH screwed the pooch - apparently they're showing James Bond movies all night! Ha! A "theme" - someone missed a meeting.

VH1 only shows marathons.

I'm sure I missed a few, but I have a customized menu to cut-out all the channels I don't watch. Which I'm thinking needs to be updated...

At approximately $80-90/month, what more could one expect?

Enjoy your New Year's Eve, folks (I'll be back to wish you a Merry New Thing) - if it seems like "just another day" to you, then you know you're watching pay TV!

© C Harris Lynn, 2008