Tag: Thanksgiving Marathon

Well here’s the last of my Thanksgiving Marathon posts and frankly I’m not sorry to see them go because the research is taking forever.

And you miss stuff, like I almost missed AMC’s Batman triple feature.

In fairness, it does start at 2:30 am which is why I’m posting early and will post promote this so I don’t drive down any more of the Front Page than I need to.

Updated twice!  Now with Listiness!

Well, Thanksgiving is starting to pass and programming returning to normal.  We still have many Marathons running in some places you might not expect.  By the time you read this VH-1 and ESPN will have already started their morning (which I’m beginning to suspect is a feature not a flaw).

We also have some double features-

• ABC Family– Richie Rich and Richie Rich’s Christmas Wish starting at 11 am and going until 3 pm.
• FX– Ice Cube in Are We There Yet and Are We Done Yet from 11 am to 3:30 pm.
• Spike– Lethal Weapon 2 & 3 from 1 pm to 6 pm and double Forrest Gump from 6 pm to Midnight.
• Comedy Central– has Barbershop and Barbershop 2: Back In Business from 2:30 pm to 7 pm.
• Oxygen– is running back to back Legally Blonde from 8 pm to Midnight.

Your ‘regular’ Marathons look something like this-

• ESPN– Sports Center 5 to 10 am.
• VH-1– Jump Start 5 to 9 am.  Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy noon to 8 pm.
• MTV– World’s Strictest Parents 6 to 11 am.
• Oxygen– America’s Next Top Model 8 am to 8 pm.
• History– Ice Road Truckers 8 am to 8 pm.
• TV Land– Married With Children 8 am to 6 pm.  Roseanne 10 pm to 2 am.  Three’s Company 2 to 6 am.
• Discovery– Dirty Jobs 10 am to 3 am.
• MSNBC– Lockup (various varieties) noon to 7 am.
• Tru TV– World’s Wildest Police Videos noon to 6 pm.
• Bravo– America’s Next Top Model noon to 10 pm.
• Disney– Sonny With A Chance 2 pm to 7 pm.
• TLC– What Not To Wear 4 pm to 2 am.
• TV Guide– Look-A-Like 4 pm to 8 pm.  My Fair Brady: Maybe Baby 10 pm to 2 am.
• A&E– Criminal Minds 7 pm to 11 pm.
• Nick– George Lopez 10 pm to 6 am.

This is too hard and yet a public service.

The problem is that you only get a 3 hour slice and then you have to track 20 layers of channels.

Until 8 pm it looks kinda like this-

7 pm Update!–

• Spike– Band of Brothers starts @ 9 am and continues until 11 pm.
• A&E– Criminal Minds starts @ 8 am and continues until 11 pm when it is interrupted for CSI: Miami and then returns at midnight for 3 more episodes.
• E!– Keeping Up With The Kardashians starts @ 9 am and finishes @ 4 pm with a break between noon and 2 for Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami
• Discovery– Deadliest Catch @ 9 am and continues until 3 am.
• TLC– Say Yes To The Dress @ 6 am and continues until 1 am.
• USA– NICS starts @ 6:30 am and stops @ 12:30 for Monk.  White Collar starts @ 1:30 and continues until 7.
• SciFi– James Bond starts @ 8 am and continues until 5:30 am.
• FX– That 70s show starts @ 8 am and finishes @ 5 pm.
• Travel– Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmer starts @ 9 am and continues until 8.
• TV Land– Sanford and Son starts @ 9 am and is replaced @ 4 pm by Andy Griffith until 10.
• VH-1- Jump Start starts @ 5 am and continues until 11 am.
• Tru TV– Haunting Evidence starts @ 9 am and is replaced by Forensic Files @ 3 pm until 6 with 6 more episodes from 9 to midnight.
• Food TV– Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives starts @ 2 pm and continues until 11 pm.
• TNT– Charmed from 8 am to 11 am.  Law and Order after that until 7.  300 at 8 pm with a repeat at 10
• Bravo– Real Housewives of New Jersey starts @ 8 am and is followed by Goodfellas @ 5 pm with a repeat at 8.
• ESPN– Sports Center 5 am to noon.
• Animal Planet– I’m Alive starts @ 1 pm and is interrupted at 10 pm, 1 am, and 5 am for Pit Bulls and Parolees.

This essay is less necessary today than it will be for the rest of the weekend because there is so much ‘special event’ programming between the parade and football, but TV schedulers have this horrible habit on holidays of using ‘Marathons’ to cover their essential laziness and lack of imagination.

Nobody knows lazy like I do and let me tell you what a Marathon is- it’s fighting Persians all day long to save democracy and western civilization and then running 26+ miles to Athens to shout “Nike!” and die.

Without a shoe endorsement contract no less.

Some networks are running their normal schedules, as we are attempting here at DocuDharma, and I give them credit for that as there is nothing better than vegging out all day watching something you like, but nothing worse than getting stuck with 24 hours of A Christmas Story (not that I don’t like Jean Shepard, but after umpty upm years of it even my Dad who is a huge fan is getting tired of Darrin McGavin).

But for the purposes of this essay we’ll be concentrating on the lazy ones and I’ll try to identify the stuff I think doesn’t suck.