AUSTIN, Texas — I love television. Getting paid to watch it is the second best job in the newsroom (the best is held by my friend Mike Sutter, the restaurant critic. He gets paid to eat.) Still, the more I watch, the more I discover little things that bother me.
Here are my current top 10 TV gripes. What are yours? E-mail 'em to me at droe(at)statesman.com.
1. Loud commercials. I'm not just talking about recently deceased Billy Mays' charming screams about OxiClean (talk about having a tough stain and shouting it out!).
Even Patrick Cox, the soft-spoken, red-bearded, deer-in-the-headlights-looking guy from Tax Masters registers several decibels louder than the WWE matches his commercials interrupt.
I know HeadOn's products — applied directly to the forehead — are supposed to relieve headaches. Do the company's commercials have to cause them, too?
2. Too many commercials. What are the odds that my top two gripes are related to commercials? This issue is especially annoying at the end of a big game or a movie thriller.
I understand that commercials are a necessary evil, but how about a little front-loading? Don't think for a minute that I don't know what you're up to, TNT, giving me the first 25 minutes of "Panic Room" commercial-free to reel me in and then gradually increasing the number of ads until, in the climactic final minutes, Jodie Foster can barely get a yelp out without a word from LendingTree.com.
Whoever schedules these commercials does not have an excuse like I do, where I become distracted by the Internet and suddenly, 10 minutes before I'm supposed to leave work, remember 50 things I have to do.
3. Shows that run over. Nothing is more frustrating than clicking through a bloated "American Idol" results show on DVR only to have your recording cut off just as Ryan Seacrest is finally going to announce that America has finally booted this season's Sanjaya.
Even if you fast-forward through the ridiculously loud commercials (and I do), there's still a lot of cereal filler in there. I've put in my time, Simon and Paula; squeeze your program into yours.
4. Press kits. OK, this one's specific to my job and not one that you're likely to run into. But the sheer amount of money that must be spent on these clicking, whirring, light-up packages containing DVDs of upcoming shows is staggering.
My electronic calendar reads 2009 — isn't it possible to put this stuff online somewhere? I know piracy is a concern, but when I think of all the good that could be done with what is spent on promotional packaging, it breaks my heart a little.
5. Show shuffling. Remember "Men in Trees"? How could you have missed it? This 2006-2008 ABC show premiered on a Tuesday, though its regular slot was 8 p.m. CT Fridays. Then it moved to Thursdays at 9. After going on hiatus, it returned at 9 p.m. Fridays. Then it got kicked to the 7 p.m. Friday slot. Finally, it aired Wednesdays at 9 p.m. What — no Mondays? I wonder why this show couldn't deliver the ratings. The fact that a show's air time is called a "slot" doesn't mean it should be like gambling to find it.
6. Premature cancellation: My wife doesn't like to watch television very much. She feels, as I suspect many people do, that the minute she becomes attached to a show, some network hatchet man who sits with binoculars outside our family room window text-messages a colleague at the home office and the show is canceled.
It's not a completely paranoid scenario (although I believe that leaving food out for the guy is a little crazy). Networks are notoriously impatient and seldom give new shows such as "My Own Worst Enemy," a Christian Slater vehicle I liked, a chance to find an audience.
7. Split/short seasons: Do I really have to wait 8 1/2 months to find out if the bomb set off by the Losties successfully reset everything? At least "Lost" ran its episodes in one chunk this year instead of splitting them up into rerun-laced fall and spring hunks with an entirely different show filling the gap.
When I was a kid, we only had reruns in the summer. "The Dick van Dyke Show" is the greatest sitcom of all time and it racked up 158 episodes in 4 1/2 years. If it aired today, we'd be lucky if we got 60.
Side note: The number of episodes of "24" should always be 24.
8. Graphic promos: I don't mean graphic as in "inappropriate," although these are. I'm talking about those annoying graphics that pop up from the bottom of my screen and obscure about a third of it. I like "Family Guy" OK, but I know when it's on and I don't need to see Peter Griffin's cartoon head flipping up during "Schindler's List."
9. Male enhancement commercials: Like I don't already get enough mail. (That joke works much better out loud than in print; try it next time you see one of these obnoxious commercials! It's a guaranteed laffer and it will distract your preteens so that they don't ask, "Daddy, what's a 'male ahancement'?" )
Look, I've "met Bob" a thousand times and I don't think his problem is going to be helped by linking physical arousal with a whistling tune that reminds people of nothing so much as Aunt Bee from "The Andy Griffith Show."
And that other product — the one that advertises during the football games I watch with my young son? — I'm not sure you're going to persuade men to talk to their doctors about a sensitive personal issue by associating it with a song parody that conjures up mental images of a bloated Elvis stuffed into a sequined jumpsuit as if it were a sausage casing. But maybe that's just subliminal advertising.
10. Jimmy Fallon: I don't think I really need to explain this one.
Dale Roe writes for the Austin American-Statesman. E-mail: droe(at)statesman.com.