What has happened to the woodworking shows? I live in the NE in the summer and Florida in the winter. Up north I have Direct TV (satellite) and in FL I have Comcast cable. I get most of the premium channels including DIY (premium on satellite) and NPR which is not premium (paid for with tax dollars and you still get the same amount of ads plus two weeks a year of bugging you to send them yet more money. New Yankee Workshop and David Marks used to appear regularly. They were great to watch even in you didn't like Norm's approach or were annoyed by Marks' insistence on making a template for every single thing he did. On Comcast I only find This Old House--no NYW and on DIY they rerun David Marks every week for the umpteenth time. Stupid channels only copy one another with idiot shows depicting warehouse battles, creative scrapbooking or how to macrame. Seems to me that with the number of woodworkers in the country they are missing a huge market. Talk about a "wasteland." Apart from the movies (most of which are PPV) there seems to be less quality content than when there were only 3 or 4.
Joe Bleau wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
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idiots deciding what shows to run have a nasty habit of showing the same 10 shows over and over and over again. While that's great for someone trying to memorize a show (that's what recording devices are for), it's terrible for someone watching the show for its entertainment value.
Joe Bleau wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
David Marks contract with the DIY folks wasn't renewed, so, at least for the foreseeable future, there will be no more new Woodworks programs. David came and spoke at our wooddorkers' club, showed some of his really neat stuff, and said he was of two minds about not doing any more work for those folks. Some of what he showed got to be repetitive, because you can only do so much in 18 minutes air time, really.
Norm's new stuff in on PBS here, which I get as part of the locals package on DirecTV. Whether you like the choices they've made is another discussion. There are at least 5 PBS stations shown in the SF Bay Area local package.
Florida for the winter has to have at least one downside beyond tourists. Maybe Comcast cable tv is that downside. ;)
You probably read the answer about Dave Marks. It was decided some time ago, that he was going to halt. Anyways, I'll give you my view about NPR. First off, each station in the NPR network, decides its schedules. If they want to drop NYW or TOH, it's up to them. Your local stations probably do viewer profiles and got a feeling that these shows don't draw an audience big enough to serve.
The NPR stations get money from YOU and the Feds. That's why they beg. I don't like it,but the other alternative is do what a lot of other nations do - tax you and they hand out the dough. If you would contact your local stations, about the shows, (a letter might work), it would register better than protesting in a news group. (just my 2 cents).
Now NYW and TOH are owned either jointly or outright by Time Warner and Marsh Productions. They sell the SHOWs to your local friendly NPR channel. The local channel has to PAY them. The Gov't doesn't own the production or pay the "stars", etc. I would imagine that each show is in the neighborhood of about $250,000 to produce. That means, writing, scripting, editing, on air talent, directing, etc. Probably even more. A lot of money to recover!
I think over time, a lot of these shows are going to be available on a subscription basis over the Internet. Already, you can see "Lost" episodes a week after they are broadcasted and there will be more of this. I would imagine that Marsh and Time-Warner are trying to figure out how to get their content (their shows) into the public more and make more money. Would you pay $1.99 to download an episode to your computer and watch it? If you would, drop the show's owners a line.
Bottom line, if you don't like what you see, let your cable and satellite company know!
Uh where do you think the money the feds give them comes from?
As for the "other alternative", the "other alternative" is to pull the plug on them. With more than a thousand channels available on just about any cable system, why do we need one more that's government subsidized?
I thought NPR was National Public Radio. I didn't know they also broadcast television shows.
Or did you mean to refer to PBS, the Public Broadcasting System which does provide telecasts of Norm Abrams' New Yankee Workshop and a woodturning show. I just found the woodturning show and it is different from the woodturning show on DIY.
I thought the David Marks' woodworking show was a DIY network series. Did his show ever appear on PBS or NPR? :-)
It appears it will be a dry season for woodworking shows.
And all of those channels are paid for and supposedly making a profit through the advertisers and are popular enough with the viewers to stay on the air. PBS and similar "public" stations simply are not, they would fail in a minute if they were left to their own devices.
They shouldn't get a penny of federal funding, period. If enough people don't want to watch them, then why bother having them around to begin with? I'm sure channels like DIY would be more than happy to pick up TOH and NYW first-run.
As has already been pointed out, you almost surely mean PBS. And "two weeks a year?" It must be at least two weeks per quarter, maybe more. I'd be happy if it was only two weeks a year.
Apples and oranges. David Marks only appeared on DIY (and still does, as you point out, in reruns). No new episodes have been made in at least three years.
NYW original episodes and recent reruns only appear on PBS. For a few years the older seasons (beginning with the first) were broadcast on HGTV, but that expired approximately four years ago, also. I doubt you'll be seeing any NYW programs older than about 2002 on PBS.
On both the satellite (with certain exceptions) and cable, you get the local PBS outlet, not the national feed. As has been pointed out elsewhere, the local stations may or may not carry NYW or any other of the various woodworking content.
I get three local PBSes on my satellite. The three major woodworking shows, NYW, American Woodshop, and The Woodwright's Shop are not all shown on any one of the three stations. All three do carry NYW, but only one carries TWWS (and it has the least coverage of the three stations), and only one carries AW (one of the other outlets).
You are the victim of local programming for those shows (NYW and TOH). Marks' show explained above.
Yeah, HGTV really went downhill with that and frankly, with the exception of Marks' show, DIY has never been up the hill.
Fortunately, on my satellite (DishNetwork), in addition to IFC, TCM, and FoxMovies (all of which play without commercials, and I believe are on the basic package), I get six or seven other movie channels (not PPV and not exactly premium like HBO, but bundled in a higher level package which includes DIY and the Military Channel).
There is a lot of time to fill on those (and other movie channels) and frankly, a trip to any video store will confirm that there is just about the same percentage of quality content on cable/satellite as there is on video (which means the general video library). That means not a lot of quality content available to fill that mass of air time.
Don't forget that your idea of quality content may not be the same as my idea of quality content (or others') so the content deciders are facing a no-win proposition in their programming decisions, no matter what. If not one more chop-socky movie were ever played, I'd be a happy camper, for example.
Cable here in NJ has been showing Woodturning Workshop from (I think) channel 21 in Long Island. However the show appears to be affiliated with Rutgers. I do not know if theses are old shows or if more are being made since recent shows have been repeats. There has been some very nice photography showing quite clearly the tool presentation on the work piece.
If you're talking about the one with Tim Yoder as the host, that's out of Rogers State University in Oklahoma. I like that a lot. He cracks me up every time he tries to pronounce cyanoacrylate and I like his teaching "always sneak up on a bead."
It's a far better show than "Woodturning Techniques" which was on DIY for quite a while.
From the program notes incuded on my satellite, the first ones aired about a year ago, and it seems like they have around 15 or 20 in the can.
Not sure what the point is. First off, the tax deductions are controlled by individuals, not by government. In that, you chose to send money to whoever you want to - religious or other charity organizations. So to claim that these groups GET support from the government because you get a deduction on your taxes, is odd. Tho, in a way, I could see it as making sure that SOME of YOUR money is diverted from the federal budget to your local charity. If that's what you mean, I agree. But where I disagree is that in some way means that there is support from the federal government because of tax deductions is a bit hard for me to follow.
The product placement is the "price of admission" for Delta or other corporations to contribute to the PRODUCTION (I bet) of the show. There might be SOME money coming to the local stations, but I would think it would be in the reduced cost of buying the series. If your local PBS station got NYW for $200g for the season WITHOUT Delta's ads or for $100g WITH the ads, guess which one they will chose?
What you're missing is that the government decides what is and is not a charity eligible for deductible donations. By deciding that PBS or NPR stations are eligible they are willingly foregoing tax revenue.
Wow! Thanks a lot for turning me on to thewoodworkingchannel.com. I went to check it out and ended up watching 2 hours of programming. Screw NPR, CPB, PBS, Comcast, Direct TV and all the rest of the dinosaur media. The future is upon us.
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