Why put it on so late? I'm going to have to find some empty tapes.

Ron, they're putting it on so late because they know it won't rate, and that those of us who hang out for a book program will sit up to watch it.

They're also putting it on so late, I should think, because book and culture programs have a woeful track record. (Think how Vulture got trashed -- and most of all in the blogosphere, by people who wanted this kind of program.) This is because they spend no money on them and almost no research -- they decide they'll have a book program, put someone inexperienced in charge of it because she's good-looking (but then don't put her in front of the camera), bung people on the program because someone said that someone else said that they know a lot about books or they saw them at a writers' festival once and they were funny, provide said amateurs with no direction at all -- and then they're surprised when it doesn't work.

As you may be guessing, I speak from unpleasant experience. Don't get me started.

For those of us who have been staying up late for the World Cup and then the Tour de France, 10pm seems positively early.

Please Kerryn, I would like to hear about it - it sounds potentially funnier and more absurd than the so-called funny and absurd book I'm reading at the moment...