I finally was able to watch one short on Spike TV. It was the only short I watched on Spike TV. The amount of commercials shown is a complete disgrace. It's very upsetting. However, the good news is that they are showing the shorts unedited. The Family Channel was terrible because they edited almost all the shorts. There were only about 2 or 3 that they didn't edit. And they edited a lot too. If Spike TV shows the 'missing 60' unedited, then I'm not going to complain. However, if they are going to continue to show those exact same shorts that AMC aired, then I'll remain upset. There has to be some station out there that will be able to get the rights to air all the shorts. It's really unfair. Why are the people living in Chicago the only people that are entitled to see all 190 shorts?
To give credit where it's due, Spike TV's list of Stooges shorts is a really good one— I would have picked most of the same shorts myself to put on the air. They're even showing one of the few decent Besser shorts, "Outer Space Jitters."
But if they're interrupting the Stooges with a lot of commercials, that bites the big one. If you're one of us "old-timers" who grew up watching the Stooges on TV as a kid in the 60's or 70's, that was how we got to know the Stooges in the first place. I can still remember the basic layout of the Officer Joe Bolton Stooges Show, which was as follows (more or less):
***
Opening circus-band theme music on circus backdrop.
Officer Joe enters, says a few words to the audience about the short, warns the kids not to try Stooges stunts at home.
[commercial]
Stooges short, stop halfway through for—
[commercials, either one 60-second or two 30-second]
Back to Stooges short (second reel),
endOfficer Joe says goodbye until next time.
***
When the Columbia Stooges VHS tapes came out, it was a
revelation to me how well-written the shorts were, and how the funny scenes just
flowed from one to the next in the best ones— I'd never seen them that way before. The same thing is true of "The Honeymooners," which really benefits from having the commercials cut out in the DVD box set.
Besides, even if you
wanted to buy a DuMont TV, you'd be out of luck...