{"id":4626,"date":"2015-05-12T13:05:27","date_gmt":"2015-05-12T12:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/?p=4626"},"modified":"2015-05-12T13:05:27","modified_gmt":"2015-05-12T12:05:27","slug":"goodbye-comedy-central-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/goodbye-comedy-central-uk\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye Comedy Central UK"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Or more particularly, Comedy Central Extra. But it comes to the same thing. <\/p>\n<p>I noticed a rather dispiriting Tweet earlier today from Hadley Freeman. <\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">As <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ComedyCentralUK\">@ComedyCentralUK<\/a> has INSANELY stopped showing The Daily Show, I&#39;m RT-ing Jon Stewart&#39;s take on the UK election <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/wyjqNa5Xaw\">http:\/\/t.co\/wyjqNa5Xaw<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Hadley Freeman (@HadleyFreeman) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/HadleyFreeman\/status\/598086805532049408\">May 12, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>That can&#8217;t be good. <\/p>\n<p>As a reminder, The Daily Show has been an ever-present in my Sky planner for years now, finding a home for a while on More 4, before re-emerging on Comedy Central UK. If there&#8217;s one series you can bank on me recording it&#8217;s this one. It&#8217;s an ever-present, and I never miss an episode. <\/p>\n<p>Looking through Comedy Central UK&#8217;s Twitter feed reveals this very odd announcement from a few days ago, in amongst the endless Friends screengrabs (Did you know they showed Friends? Why, yes, they do!):<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">A short announcement about The Daily Show: <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/Xi4dVNb1ry\">http:\/\/t.co\/Xi4dVNb1ry<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/heP0Rru7sc\">pic.twitter.com\/heP0Rru7sc<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Comedy Central UK (@ComedyCentralUK) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ComedyCentralUK\/status\/596325746840219648\">May 7, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>I can only think someone might think that Jon Stewart&#8217;s gritted teeth made an appropriate image.<\/p>\n<p>Clicking on the link gets you this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.comedycentral.co.uk\/the-daily-show\/articles\/the-daily-show\">very oddly worded message<\/a> on their website (which is desperately trying to be a comedy version of Buzzfeed or something, and seems to consider their TV channels as something of an afterthought):<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/dailyshow.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/dailyshow-1024x545.jpg\" alt=\"dailyshow\" width=\"520\" height=\"277\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-4627\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/dailyshow-1024x545.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/dailyshow-300x160.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/dailyshow.jpg 1207w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 520px) 100vw, 520px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Judging from the language, I assume somebody asked the work experience kid to put something on Twitter about how the valuable <strong>1am<\/strong> slot on their second channel, where The Daily Show had slowly been relegated into, was needed for repeats of Two and a Half Men.<\/p>\n<p>What on earth does &#8220;Moving away from talk shows&#8221; mean? As far as I&#8217;m aware, they only had The Daily Show. What they probably meant was that it was a bit too much hassle for someone to download the programme each day, comply it, and chuck it into a scheduling system.<\/p>\n<p>The writing was on the wall when the timeslot slipped further and further backwards into the small hours. Although amusingly, that didn&#8217;t stop someone amending the &#8220;DOG&#8221; if someone famous was being interviewed. This implies thinking like this: &#8220;I <em>might<\/em> have been about to go to bed at 1.15am, but I just noticed that Ricky Gervais was tonight&#8217;s guest, so I guess I&#8217;ll stay up!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The timing of the cancellation was beautiful, coming a week after lots of high profile interviews with Stewart about his film, Rosewater, which has just been released. And of course, as the above Tweet notes, Stewart&#8217;s take on the UK election. Finally, Stewart himself is stepping down in August, which would have been a natural breakpoint. I certainly hope that Trevor Noah hits the ground running, but it&#8217;s fair to say that a change in presenter would have at least afforded many viewers a reappraisal.<\/p>\n<p>Still, Comedy Central UK has other &#8220;comedy genres&#8221; to concentrate on. Unfortunately for them, Friends, Sex and the City, Russell Howard repeats and Two and a Half Men don&#8217;t float my boat. Plus I&#8217;m really annoyed at this move, so that&#8217;s me gone.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, Sky Atlantic has moved up John Oliver&#8217;s Last Week Tonight, from Tuesdays to Mondays, and schedules it within their big Monday evening HBO fare &#8211; Games of Thrones, Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d ask who&#8217;s going to carry Stephen Colbert&#8217;s upcoming show in the UK. But I know for certain that whoever gets it will quickly lose interest in it. I mean nobody is even bothering to show James Corden&#8217;s programme, and he&#8217;s a pretty big UK star! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Or more particularly, Comedy Central Extra. But it comes to the same thing. I noticed a rather dispiriting Tweet earlier today from Hadley Freeman. As @ComedyCentralUK has INSANELY stopped showing The Daily Show, I&#39;m RT-ing Jon Stewart&#39;s take on the UK election http:\/\/t.co\/wyjqNa5Xaw &mdash; Hadley Freeman (@HadleyFreeman) May 12, 2015 That can&#8217;t be good. As [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[476,477,475,556],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4626"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4626"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4629,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4626\/revisions\/4629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}