I expected there would be delays in taking off at JFK International Airport, but this is ridiculous.

Really though what I found most amazing was that there were three gates at JFK that from some point in time prior to 10:00 to 12:30 on a Thursday morning without a single flight taking off from them.

NBC announced layoffs earlier this week, and they also announced that they would no longer air scripted dramas and comedies at the 8:00 PM Eastern hour because game shows and reality shows are cheaper to produce. The example comparison that I saw was an episode of Friday Nights Lights costs $2.6 million, while an episode of Deal or No Deal costs only $1.1 million. What? Deal or No Deal costs $1.1 million per episode? There's nothing to this show.

In other news, FOX is advertising a new game show called The Rich List, which they say is the first game show with no limit to the amount of money that you can win. (Jeopardy got rid of it's five day limit a while ago, and it seems to me that there's no limit to the money one can win on it either.) This is clearly a ploy to entice viewers, but if it is really true, this means that there is no limit to what the budget of the show will be. As the number of reality shows and games show proliferates, they have to try to outdo the last one, which leads me to believe that their budgets are indeed growing.

The deciding factor in whether or not to air a show has to be viewers per dollar to make. (Okay, so it's really ad dollar generated per dollar spent to make the show, but that's essentially a weighted average of who's watching.) Could the next breakthrough category of network show be the low-budget scripted show? When game shows get so lavish that their budgets become comparable to scripted shows, will they be able to stand?

Time Warner Cable and the NFL

On this page from the Time Warner website, it says:

We know you love football-which is why, as a Time Warner Cable customer, you’ll enjoy a ton of NFL games this season, many available in High Definition. That includes every single one of your home-team games, whether played at home or away, as
well as many other NFL games.

Hm, didn't I hear something about how the FCC had to get involved and force Time Warner to carry the NFL Network for one month on the regions that they acquired in the summer from Adelphia and Comcast? Yes, those regions had the NFL Network, but when TWC took over they dropped the NFL Network immediately, which is a violation of federal law. The law however only required that they give the consumer a one month notification that a network would be dropped, and so TWC gave them the one month and then dropped it. Those of us who have been served by TMC for a while have never had the NFL Network.

When the NFL Network is showing practice scrimages, not having it is not so much of a problem. However, starting Thanksgiving night, the NFL Network will start showing real games. Since TMC started a website entirely devoted to defending their actions in their dispute with the NFL Network and called it www.nflgetreal.com, it seems pretty clear to me that TMC is in the wrong, especially compared to this page which provides the NFL Network's response.