The TV Guide Channel

When this year's movie award shows begin, don't expect to find Joan and Melissa Rivers on E! No, Star Jones-Reynolds is handling the red carpet for them now. To find Joan and Melissa, you'll have to tune to the TV Guide Channel.

You know the TV Guide Channel, the cable "network" that scrolls the hourly TV Listings at the speed of illiteracy up the bottom third of the screen. The top two-thirds of the screen belongs to the most insipid form of TV on any dial. But for those of us without on-demand program listings, the channel is unavoidable.

Somehow, what was once a service to cable subscribers has become a forum for peddling hardcore Hollywood inanity. The biggest change to the channel came in the spring of 2003 when the background color of the scroll went from orange to blue because blue "resonates with 18-to-34-year-old male viewers and feels more modern and high-tech than [orange]." Take a moment to consider that a group of people made money, probably a considerable amount of it, determining what background color the male 18-34 demographic likes best when they have no idea what to watch.

And TV Guide didn't stop there. They have transformed what was once simply a service with a few innocuous infomercials running in the background into something that only a corporate committee would describe as entertainment. Above the scroll we now have "shows" and "specials" and interviews with the latest Hollywood nobodies, when all we really need is a faster, larger scroll.

The channel's own ads promise "exclusive interviews, the latest buzz and the hottest stars." What we get instead is an inside look into why pop-punk singer Mark McGrath put Sugar Ray aside and is now a co-host of "Extra." Allow me to end your suspense: After 16 years of making music, the band had "plateaued" and Mark asked himself "what else was out there." It's the age-old story: rock star wants to host a celebrity gossip news magazine. No doubt, Vince Neil is waiting on pins and needles for Pat O'Brien to retire.

The "hosts" of the TV Guide Channel are a fascinating blend of milquetoast, cardboard and news-anchor hair. Currently, the most prevalent of these caricatures is Madison Michele. A thousand years from now when all the races on earth are blended into one, all women will look like Madison Michele. And like Madison, perhaps we'll all use surnames as first names and vice versa. Almost as ubiquitous is Lesley Ann Machado. If she were any more forgettable she'd be subliminal.

But the hosts aren't all no-names. The TV Guide Channel is a good place for B and C level celebrities to drag their fingernails as they are being pulled into obscurity. After being bumped from "The View," Debbie Matenopoulos — Barbara Walters' gift to "Saturday Night Live" — rebounded by landing there. Debbie is gone now, but who can forget her legacy?

Certainly not John Henson. Yes, John Henson, formerly of "Talk Soup" has joined the channel as a host. Skunk Boy himself, whose fame was built on ridiculing the worst TV had to offer, is now trying to tell us that White Chicks is worth seeing. For any former "Talk Soup" fans, it's not worth knowing what's on TV if it comes at that price.

And Kelly Caldwell, the other "American Idol" Kelly — the one who got eliminated but won't go away — occasionally shows her face on the channel. Look forward to stints by Tiffani Thiessen, Christopher Lowell and Ashlee Simpson.

So now Joan and Melissa Rivers have joined the celebrity death march to irrelevancy. The ladies find themselves broadcasting on a station whose sole purpose is to show us what else we could be watching. The golden age of red carpet dish is over; everyone can dress like Björk.

TV Guide Channel should be a service to subscribers, not an assault on them. Sure, there are expenses in broadcasting, and if the network has to sell advertising to make a little profit, fine. But what we're getting now is overproduced, sugary sweet, lobotomized drivel. We're already annoyed that we don't know what is on TV; having to hear about Andy Dick's favorite shows while we try to find out is cruel.

— Patrick Quirk (pquirk@gmail.com)