Dear The Hour,

It’s not you, it’s me.

No, actually, it’s not me either; it’s whoever came up with that god-awful schedule this season.

Do you remember how last season and the season before, we would meet up every night at 9:00, which was a perfect time, as all the chores had been done and we could all sit down and enjoy each other’s company? The whole family would pile onto the couch together and we would discuss the news that you presented and we would debate the issues that you raised. It was perfect and we rarely missed an episode in two years.

Imagine our dismay when we found out that if we wanted to become engaged in our favourite show this season we had to watch at either 6:00 or 11:00pm. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but around our house those are pretty much the worst evening hours to attempt to watch television. The Hour might as well be on at 4:00am.

Frankly, I don’t see how anyone west of Manitoba or east of Quebec could routinely tune in to The Hour this year. In fact, if I were to subscribe to any sort of western alienation theory, this would be perfect fodder to fuel complaints of centralist bias in the CBC. I don’t think this is the case, but it sure looks bad from out here in the provinces.

And please don’t tell me I can tape The Hour and watch it at a more convenient time. For a variety of long and boring reasons, usually involving the necessity to watch the taped show in a cold grungy basement on a broken couch with a spring sticking into my ass, taping is just not a workable option. Lord knows I’ve tried; I keep taping the show and I keep not watching those tapes. But that, of course, is my problem, not yours.

I do appreciate the fact that you put each show in its entirety on the website. I’ve even watched parts of some of those shows. But The Hour is the type of program that you want to watch as a community. I want to be able to sit down with my entire family and really watch the show as a group, to use it as a springboard for some scintillating discussions. Huddling over a one-inch square video clip on a computer screen, sadly, just does not lend itself to that sort of activity.

We did manage to catch most of the special episode on Sunday night, featuring the Tragically Hip and that was great to see. And it is a little easier to make those sorts of arrangements on a Sunday night, rather than on a week night. Even so, I still had to move heaven and earth to accomplish that.

Please consider either making the 8:00pm episode to be on National Time, so that it is on at 8:00 across the country, much as the 11:00pm show is on at that time nationally, or adding some other options so that people who aren’t in the central time zones have an opportunity to enjoy The Hour, as we have in the past.

Otherwise, I’m afraid that, for our family anyway, The Hour will shift from being an essential program that we cannot miss, to one that we will catch occasionally, under special circumstances.

I really hate to say goodbye, but I fear this is The End.

Barbara B.