It’s grand to see that, in times of serious recession, our more advanced-thinking companies can spend their money wisely – unlike our degenerate bankers, it appears. I try to spend our remaining money wisely, too. That means that I refuse to pay Rupert Murdoch vast amounts of dosh for endlessly regurgitated 60s and 70s sitcoms. Instead, I’m limited to the free to air channels.
One of those is FiveUS. More correctly, one of those used to be FiveUS. FiveUS shows an endlessly repeated series of the apparently endlessly produced American crime series such as CSI, Crime Scene Investigation, and all of its money-spinning spin-offs. [Aside: The illustrious Mr. Bruckheimer must be an extraordinarily wealthy, recession-proof man.] Just for some variety, endless repeats of Numbers, solving crimes by integral calculus, are also screened. This channel may be nothing but endless repeats but at least they are free endless repeats. CSI investigators shining small Maglite torches (sorry, it’s American – flashlights) in broad daylight and finding "trace" the size of a Greyhound bus to pick up with their tweezers may be banal but it beats "Big Brother" (either celebrity or otherwise) and "I’m a Dickhead, Get Me Out of Here".
Imagine my surprise when FiveUS disappeared and re-emerged as FiveUSA. I can only assume that large chunks of its target audience were confused by the "US" part of the channel’s name; maybe they thought that "us" was the first-person plural pronoun for we: our Five channel, or some such. The poor simpletons must have been incapable of realizing that the "US" was connected with a constant diet of American (that’s the United States, guys) programming. FiveUSA (that’s the United States of America, guys; its full title) is much clearer.
[The marketing bullshit for this "rebranding" is quite impressive.]
Duh!
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