RIP, Trio

Trio TV went off the air as of the new year, which was unsurprising as the digital-only network had been having trouble for years; it will now be broadband-only. Tivo was smart and interesting, which spelled doom. Unfortunately like many young cable networks it didn't have a ton of resources for programming; it's reach exceeded its grasp leading to a LOT of rerun programming. But as Spencer Tracy once said, "Not much meat on her, but what's there is cherce." They weren't afraid to attack sacred cows, exposing the sham that is the Golden Globes and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, or airing an entire short series around battles over television content. They had an amazing documentary on the infamous flop Heaven's Gate and scheduled their TV reruns in a series called "Brilliant but Cancelled". Now, I suppose, that applies to Trio itself as well.

So what channel does NBC Universal slip onto the lineup in Trio's place, so surreptitiously that it remained on my "favorite channels"? The new Sleuth TV, a channel so lame that it doesn't even have a website. Now, if this were a channel full of crappy 70s Quinn Martin detective shows, that would be one thing. Sadly it's a channel full of crappy 80s Stephen Cannell detective shows and therefore, it's off the favorites.

And the march of progress continues.