Detritus of the Mind

Don't ask me why, but I find history of TV as a medium rather interesting.  The early days of cable are particularly fascinating, since the commercial realities and availabilities are totally alien to today's market.  The difference between my area, which was a sort of "early adopter" of cable TV, and other regions where you think there'd be a rush to get it (like Chicago, as you'll see) is also interestingly baffling.  I can't see anyone putting up with a station that (a) required an extra payment, (b) was only broadcast part-time over a UHF signal, and (c) required a special piece of equipment just to receive it & it alone like OnTV did.  And they definitely wouldn't cotton to a limited-time-even-for-recordings service like Tele1st, which is truly the oddest of the bunch. This was originally written on 5/2/2008. --- I was home sick, again, most of Monday and all of Tuesday. Usually, when that happens, I wind up goofing off on YouTube (sinc...

(Welcome to the first true Archival entry.  This one will cover several entries, with new commentary being provided, as per tradition, in colored italics.) Disney's W.I.T.C.H. was a series that I had an odd relationship with - I liked the concept & designs more than the execution, and the TV adaptation proved to be as uneven a mixed bag as the source material, just in different ways.  I still have a weird fondness for the series, even if it's no longer available in English anywhere (heck, the English publications from the Phillipines stopped mid-story arc).  Maybe it's because I really, really wanted a big company like Disney to prove that magical girls can be done for our market; after all, it's still going strong in its native Italy, and they're second to Japan as far as loving the genre.  With that, I present three musings on W.I.T.C.H. & my relationship with the franchise before Disney decided to leave it in Europe for good. --- (Original date: ...