POP/CULTURE: Future of television remains in the past
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By David Burke | Sunday, January 13, 2008 |
I have seen the future of television, and it looks an awful lot like it did when I was growing up.
It’s called the Retro Television Network, and it’s being shown on a rapidly growing number of broadcast stations (it’s gone from 30 to 50 in the past few months) around the country, mostly on their secondary digital channels.
It is, as the name implies, retro. It includes reruns of TV series generally not seen on cable channels, such as “Family Affair,” “Family Ties,” “Gomer Pyle,” “Happy Days,” “The Honeymooners,” “Ironside,” “Mission: Impossible,” “Mork and Mindy,” “Petticoat Junction,” “Rawhide” and “Wild Wild West.”
Local stations have the option of picking up whatever shows they want, and scheduling them however they wish. The closest RTN station to us is KWWF in Waterloo, Iowa, which brands itself as RTN, but only carries “Hawaii Five-O” and “Perry Mason” in prime time. The rest of the time is filled by newer reruns and syndicated stuff such as “Tyra Banks,” “Jerry Springer” and “Family Feud.” (KWWF was in the former UPN network, and hooked up with RTN in the fall of 2006.)
Many of the newer RTN affiliates are secondary channels of stations owned by Young Broadcasting, which also owns KWQC-TV6 in Davenport.
Allen Wiese, executive vice president of KWQC, said Ch. 6 RTN was not in the immediate future, but “there might be a plan down the road to do that.”
KWQC’s digital channel was claimed for a First Alert Weather station last summer.
After watching some RTN while in Iowa City, I like the network’s “branding” — a funky logo and a slogan that has a dog and the phrase, “Sit. Stay. Watch.”
It also has “retromercials,” reruns of vintage TV ads from the 1960s and ’70s.
It’s reminiscent of the earlier days of TV Land, before the cable channel concentrated all of its efforts on running the same series titles endlessly and making bizarre programming choices (Movies from the ’80s? Reruns of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”?)
In an ever-changing world, it’s always nice to have a little bit of video comfort food nearby.
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