For those who watch LOTSW on American PBS TV

M

manfromoswestry

Dedicated Member
Don't you hate it when LOTSW gets interrupted by some pledge drive or some other programming special? This is the second week in a row that my local PBS station isn't airing LOTSW in favor of some special where a doctor or business advisor gives a lecture and then tries to sell books and DVD's during the pledge break. I know the stations need private donations to keep going, but to do so at the expense of LOTSW can be quite aggravating at times.
 
Yeah, it is very agonizing. Especially when it's a month long.

I remember first viewing the show on there, and one or two months later they had the pledge drive. I was new to the series but became a fan very soon and then had to endure it not being on. Thank goodness for youtube and dailymotion.

Then a year later the station I found the show on stopped showing it. Though, they'll show Eastenders during a pledge drive or not. Not really sure what series the show started with on the NC PBS channel, I know it was Foggy's first year when I caught it and they stopped showing it after Seymour's first year.

Since getting a flatscreen TV that does HD channels. We now get the South Carolina PBS channel and I found that it shows Last of the Summer Wine, but it's only showing the later episodes with Billy Hardcastle. I wish they'd show the older episodes, though.
 
Yes, the break in programming is so frustrating..... I just set the recorder and
come back when the pledge drive is over.
 
Saturday's programming here is almost extinct due to pledge programming, so I stick to sports then. The good thing is we have a great loyal fan base of British show in Maryland Public Television, known as "Afternoon Tea" from 1:30-4:30. Fortunately MPT gathered the fans via e-mail and televised announcements and raised the funds in order for Afternoon Tea (which begins with Summer Wine) to go uninterrupted for a long time.

I wish I could pledge more but I am on an extremely tight budget. Anyway, my advice to my fellow countrymen, when they have the pledge drives, support public television and let them know it is primarily because of the British shows, especially Summer Wine.

We are lucky, PBS stations in Central Penn. and Washington DC for a few examples, don't even have Summer Wine! I don't recall Cincinnati having it either in my college days but I wasn't a PBS viewer back then.

Oh yes, and those self-help lectures, etc. are ANNOYING!
 
MST3Claye said:
Since getting a flatscreen TV that does HD channels. We now get the South Carolina PBS channel and I found that it shows Last of the Summer Wine, but it's only showing the later episodes with Billy Hardcastle. I wish they'd show the older episodes, though.
Click to expand...

As I mentioned in a previous thread, PBS airs what they think will have an appeal to their audience. I think the target audience for their choice of British shows is a fairly educated group in their 50's and up. A lot of Summer Wine's earlier seasons had topics and discussions that were more Britain-specific. The later seasons (I think) had more mass appeal. It personally took me longer to get into the older episodes.
 
The PBS station in MD shows the whole series now, from start to end. They started the series over again about 2 weeks ago. They skip all the specials, but at least they show all the rest of the shows & in order.

A couple years back they only used to show the series from the mid-'80's years onward. & what's worse they showed them out of order, they'd be showing a series, then suddenly jump to another season of the show and start showing that one. This is why when I started watching the series I saw it all out of order. But now they show it the way they should have been doing all along, from beg. to end in ep. guide order. Now if they would only show the specials too it would be ideal.
 
Our NC PBS station shows NO summer wine.

Instead, we get the same Saturday shows year
after year:
As Time Goes By
Waiting For Gawd
The Bucket Woman
Are You Being Served?

Same four damned shows for the last umpty-ump
years. I can recite the dialogue from memory now.

Only change is for bega-thon when there are no
Brit-Coms.

We no longer watch PBS at all, nor do we watch US TV
(save for the evening news). Pretty much everything
we watch is downloaded and watched on DVD.

Hve you seen Lovejoy??
 
I can do you one better. I don't even watch the news on TV, it's all so obviously liberally slanted it just makes me mad, I get my news from radio. As for TV I don't even watch any new TV shows, they're all aimed at the lowest common denominator and it goes without saying are all base and tasteless. But I do watch a lot of TV still, it all comes from my beloved DVDs where I can watch great old TV shows and different old TV shows every night of the week. I've created my own Classic TV channel in my own house and watch only the old TV shows I like. The only thing new I watch is Judge Judy and Modern Family. Everything else I watch is old TV shows and all from DVD. I cancelled my cable 5 years ago and have been smiling ever since.
 
We do get Summer Wine on our PBS however they've relegated it to
Thursday nights....but we still get it! When I send my pledge in I make a
point of thanking them for airing SW. Of course, if SW is withdrawn so will
my pledge....it's the only thing I watch on TV!
 
cciaffone said:
Our NC PBS station shows NO summer wine.

Instead, we get the same Saturday shows year
after year:
As Time Goes By
Waiting For Gawd
The Bucket Woman
Are You Being Served?

Same four damned shows for the last umpty-ump
years.
Click to expand...

Yep... I've seen all of the episodes for all of these shows (except KUA) for the reason you stated. Though I'd take the 9pm slot to do my own viewing of Summer Wine even though Keeping Up Appearances would be on then. I remember catching Summer Wine on here mid-September in 2007 then in October 2008 after doing When You Take A Good Bite Yorkshire Tastes Terrible and a begathon.. no more Summer Wine. :(
 
While my standard PBS station runs daily and just wrapped up Cheering Up Gordon last week, we have a special cable channel (Maryland Public Television 2) that runs standard extras of the channels regular programs. Sunday night they have a block of Britsih shows including Summer Wine at 7. ALthough they are in the stages of Compo's passing and played Just a Small Funeral.

As brilliant as those three shows are, I have to be put in the right mood for them because the subject is a little heavier than the normal light-hearted comedy.

It sure is good to revisit the later years, however, part of me thinks I should refrain from watching it and just stick to the daily sequence from beginning to end. This way I especially appreciate moments like Seymour's intro, Foggy's return, Truly and Billy's intros, etc. Seeing the episodes of various orders might spoil me and my appreciation of the characters a bit.
 
manfromoswestry said:
It is now working on the 3rd week here without LOTSW on PBS. To say this is frustrating would be an understatement.
Click to expand...

We used to have the problem of pladge drives interfering with Summer Wine. What really aggrevated me was they would often have a mini pledge drive program only during the three hour block of British shows. What the station eventually did (probably after getting a number of complaints) was announce to the Brit Show fans that in order to go without pledge drives they would need a certain number of pledges within a month or so. If they reach that number, then the programming can go uninterrupted for 6 or 9 months or so. Maryland Public Television received the proper amount of pledges and they happily continue without pledge drives in the afternoons.

I suggest contacting your PBS station and recommending the plan. Tell them to contact Maryland Public Television for advice or details.
 
Oops...thought I had posted this earlier, my apology if it shows twice.

Here in Oregon I've downloaded the series for free from thebox.bz. Each series comes out to just under 4GB, and I now have them ALL in a nice not-so-little binder.
It's a bit hard to get going and I paid for a bit of the GB I needed to get started, but now it's great. Thebox is all BBC shows, some going back to the 60's (anyone here remember Emma Peel ?)
Presently hooked on Life On Mars.

Yeah, the pledge drives drove me to insanity, so I found other solutions. Wonderful stuff.
Di
 
Oregon Diane said:
Oops...thought I had posted this earlier, my apology if it shows twice.

Here in Oregon I've downloaded the series for free from thebox.bz. Each series comes out to just under 4GB, and I now have them ALL in a nice not-so-little binder.
It's a bit hard to get going and I paid for a bit of the GB I needed to get started, but now it's great. Thebox is all BBC shows, some going back to the 60's (anyone here remember Emma Peel ?)
Presently hooked on Life On Mars.

Yeah, the pledge drives drove me to insanity, so I found other solutions. Wonderful stuff.
Di
Click to expand...

A box showing all BBC shows going back to the 60's! Sounds AWESOME. I would love to see the details and how it works (downloading certain programs).
 
Believe what is meant is a web site called www.thebox.bz with
which "torrents" are uploaded and downloaded. I have obtained
most of The Royal and Heartbeat, among others, from that
site.
 
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