Bryan Tipton

Over the last six months, I've developed an evening routine where I fall asleep to the midnight showing of Cheers on TVLand. There is just something so lulling and comforting about the show that it makes me fall peacefully to sleep.

A brief Cheers aside. I am definitely pro-Diane and anti-Rebecca episodes. Second aside. There are shows that I grew up with and loved. But I watch them now and their allure is lost on me. Family Ties was a TV staple for me, but it didn't age well. I watch it and constantly ask myself, "I once found this funny?" There are several other shows in this category. However, I must say that I still laugh outloud at Cheers. It's aged perfectly. Sam Malone is one of the greatest TV characters of all time.

Anyway, the braintrust at TVLand have decided for one reason or another, to destroy my sleep routine by intermittently removing Cheers and replacing it with random crap. This causes me much distess as I am then unable to turn off my brain and it runs all night.

Sometimes I find a placebo in E!'s midnight airing of Saturday Night Live. However, last night I was completely orphaned. Not only did TVLand show some crap on Sunday night, but E! decided to show their crapumentary, True Hollywood Story.

E! is the worst run channel on the dial. First, they're cheap. Secondly, it shows. For their crapumentaries, they refuse to pay money to use actual footage or music. Instead of paying for clearance to use said footage or music, they'll pan across an archived photo accompanied by narration. Or even worse, they'll perform a reenactment. I loathe reenactments. Try watching one of their top 100 countdown shows. Tell me the number of times they show actual footage from an event they talk about. It's painful to watch.

Let me return to last night. E! didn't run an SNL rerun. Instead they opted for a True Hollywood Story. On Paula Abdul! But it gets better. The show was two hours long.

Really, E! President of Programming? That's the best you could do? Two hours on the life of Paula Abdul? Really? What's next week? A four hour expose on Mindy Cohn? You're killin' me, Smalls.