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A Rare Time When Simsub Saved The Day For Viewers
As most here are aware, I hate the policy of simsub, where a Canadian station replaces an American one on cable showing the same program. Normally, it drives me crazy and I prefer to see it on the originating U.S. network. But on Wednesday night, viewers watching "Celebrity Jeopardy" on CTV may not be aware how lucky they were.
ABC made the rather baffling decision to interrupt the last 6 minutes of the show for a report of a small plane crashing into the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., with resulting fatalities. A sad story, to be sure, but was it worthy of interrupting network programming? I'm not sure it was. ABC cut into the end of Jeopardy and viewers in the States never saw who won the game, because the "Special Report" went on so long, they never got back to show the ending.
Meanwhile, those watching on CTV had no idea what was happening on the American channel and wound up seeing who was crowned as a come-from-behind champion on the night. It looked like ABC was going to go back to the show and let it finish, but then they made another odd decision.
They cut back to Jeopardy where it left off, saw the regular game finish with two players neck and neck, and then cut to the heavily hyped first episode debut of a new drama called "Paradise." ABC decided to go with it on time because it's actually a Hulu show and they were hoping to give it a lot of hype by showing only the first episode, so people would subscribe to see the rest.
Which means American viewers and those watching on Channel 7 in Buffalo never saw Final Jeopardy or who won the game.
So in this case, CTV not only showed you the winner - but their viewers were the winners, as well.
I can only imagine the complaints coming on social media by what the network decided to do from upset viewers denied an ending after watching the show for almost a full hour. I'd be pretty upset, too. But if you were watching in Canada, you had no idea it even happened. And at least you know who won.
- ED1
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Re: A Rare Time When Simsub Saved The Day For Viewers
RadioActive wrote:
As most here are aware, I hate the policy of simsub, where a Canadian station replaces an American one on cable showing the same program. Normally, it drives me crazy and I prefer to see it on the originating U.S. network. But on Wednesday night, viewers watching "Celebrity Jeopardy" on CTV may not be aware how lucky they were.
ABC made the rather baffling decision to interrupt the last 6 minutes of the show for a report of a small plane crashing into the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., with resulting fatalities. A sad story, to be sure, but was it worthy of interrupting network programming? I'm not sure it was. ABC cut into the end of Jeopardy and viewers in the States never saw who won the game, because the "Special Report" went on so long, they never got back to show the ending.
Meanwhile, those watching on CTV had no idea what was happening on the American channel and wound up seeing who was crowned as a come-from-behind champion on the night. It looked like ABC was going to go back to the show and let it finish, but then they made another odd decision.
They cut back to Jeopardy where it left off, saw the regular game finish with two players neck and neck, and then cut to the heavily hyped first episode debut of a new drama called "Paradise." ABC decided to go with it on time because it's actually a Hulu show and they were hoping to give it a lot of hype by showing only the first episode, so people would subscribe to see the rest.
Which means American viewers and those watching on Channel 7 in Buffalo never saw Final Jeopardy or who won the game.
So in this case, CTV not only showed you the winner - but their viewers were the winners, as well.
I can only imagine the complaints coming on social media by what the network decided to do from upset viewers denied an ending after watching the show for almost a full hour. I'd be pretty upset, too. But if you were watching in Canada, you had no idea it even happened. And at least you know who won.
The “small” plane ended up being a Bombardier CRJ-700 regional jet with 60 passengers and crew that collided with a US military black hawk helicopter, while trying to land at one of Washington’s major airports. It is also the first fatal airline crash on US soil of this magnitude since 2009. Arguably it’s a pretty big news story.
Granted, the networks could have kept their cut-in short, or have pre-recorded a special report to run inside one of their commercial breaks and point people to their rolling coverage online or their respective streaming channels, or even at minimum run a crawl. Having them do absolutely nothing on their main network would be a disservice to their viewers.
Also, in the age of streaming and catch-up, viewers who really cared to find out who won on Jeopardy or what happened on the Chicago crossovers can just visit the network’s website the next day to watch.
Spare a thought to viewers in the Washington, DC area as well as Wichita, Kansas where stations there completely dumped network programming to do rolling coverage on this story.
Last edited by ED1 (January 30, 2025 3:32 am)
- RadioActive
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Re: A Rare Time When Simsub Saved The Day For Viewers
You aren't wrong about the total number of passengers lost and even a small plane crash is a tragedy. But remember, at the time ABC did not know that. They were reporting only that it was a "small passenger plane" and appeared to indicate the number of passengers on board was around 4, according to early indications.
And yes, it was worthy of a special bulletin. But funny how these things always seem to come at the climax of a TV show, leaving viewers in the dark about how their show ended. (They seem to do this a lot of with those "Emergency Test" announcements - always at around the :55 minute mark.)
What ABC should have done was air the last part of the show to find out who won, delaying the next program by about 10 minutes and the same for the local news. It would not have been a huge disruption. Instead, they briefly went back to Jeopardy where it left off, showed that for about two minutes, then cut it off in the middle of a contestant's answer to keep to the schedule. That was just a bad decision.
But I'm not trying to downplay the importance of the story. One death is far too many. Especially considering how many "close calls" there have been at American airports in the last year or two. Makes you kind of frightened to fly!
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Thread Starter- mace
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Re: A Rare Time When Simsub Saved The Day For Viewers
I pvr'd Chicago Wednesday out of Seattle. NBC interrupted Fire and PD for about five minutes each.
- RadioActive
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Re: A Rare Time When Simsub Saved The Day For Viewers
Talk about timing. If this terrible accident had happened on Monday night instead of Wednesday, it would have posed a huge problem for both CBS and Global. The Tuesday night episode of "FBI" centered on terrorists getting control of a fictional airlines' computer system and threatening to take control of airborne planes and crash them all over the U.S.
There's no way they would have been able to show that episode if the Washington disaster had happened at a different time, leaving them scrambling to fill that space, probably with a rerun. As it is, it may be a while before that episode gets shown again.
For the moment, though, it remains up on their website.
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