57 Channels (And Nothin' On)

Remember when infomercials were something you only saw if you fell asleep on the couch watching the local UHF station and woke up with a stiff neck at 3AM?

Now they're all over the place, and in broad daylight, too. Cable channels, major networks, smack dab in the middle of what used to be prime cartoon or soap-opera or bass fishin' show time. (I vaguely remember that the bass fishin' show was the official signal that cartoon time was over on Saturday mornings, and it was time to go outside and play. After helping mom dust or vacuum, of course.)

And what is it with the supernatural fad? There's historical ghosts on the history channels, scientific ghost detecting teams on the science channels, ghosts in scenic locations on the travel channels, and dog ghosts on the nature channels. Has the country gone stupid while I wasn't looking, or is this something to do with the fascination folks have lately with zombies and werewolves and sparkly emo vampires? When did the undead hijack the zeitgeist?

Here's an idea: If you don't have anything to show on your TeeWee channel, turn it off until you do. They used to do that every night, you know. They'd run out of stuff to show sometime after Johnny Carson, and so they'd play the national anthem and show something patriotic, like jet fighters zooming across the screen, and then they'd turn off their station and serve up a test pattern until they had more good stuff to show the next morning, like Scooby Doo.