Thursday, November 3, 2011

TCM and scheduling shorts

Somebody just commented on a post I put up over two years ago about the Pete Smith short Let's Talk Turkey, asking if it would be aired again any time soon.

Unfortunately, TCM doesn't schedule its shorts the way it schedules features. The shorts only show up on the schedule a couple of weeks ahead of time, as opposed to the two months or more for the monthly schedules. As it stands, there currently aren't any of the Pete Smith shorts on the schedule for however many days ahead they've programmed shorts. That would be at least a week and a half, since Pete Smith is listed as the narrator of the Dogville short Trader Hound, which is listed at 11:30 AM on November 12. Shorts don't normally begin right on the half hour, but this airing of Trader Hound is different because it's coming right after the last part of the last Zorro serial. (There doesn't seem to be a new serial starting on November 19, either; instead, the "Lone Wolf" movies will be on the schedule.)

In short (no pun intended), I'm sorry to the commenter who's looking for Let's Talk Turkey, but I have no idea if it's going to be airing any time soon.

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