Confused about the great network switch of '95 in Baltimore? In the rudderless '90s, we should be used to such upheavals.
Our parents' mortgage was held all 30 years by the same banker, but today's mortgage company bundles off new home loans to investors before the first payment's been made. In fact, that corner lender is now owned by an interstate bank hundreds of miles away. Your Japanese car was made in America and your American car was made in Mexico. The political party that your grandparents and parents supported unfallingly didn't get your vote. And the notion of the general practitioner who treated you from cradle to grave with a tiny satchel is an ancient memory. At least we can always count on baseball. . . oh well.
Never fear. We've survived these traumatic changes, this too we'll survive. Like many of our other cultural revolutions, these network maneuvers have to do with money, not comfort and convenience.
Spurred by the growth of Rupert Murdoch's Fox TV empire, affiliates of the three traditional networks are changing partners in cities across the country, but nowhere so frenetically as in Baltimore. On Monday, WBAL (Channel 11) will go from CBS to NBC (where it started). WMAR (Channel 2) will leave NBC for ABC. And WJZ (Channel 13) ends its 44-year association with ABC for CBS.
The Baltimore stations (mainly channels 2 and 11) are spending $3 million in promotions, plus hour-long specials, so you won't misplace the TV friends you were turning to. It would seem that most viewers paying attention to these explanatory spots and specials are TV junkies who can find their favorite shows for themselves. Besides, keeping the dial glued to the same station in this age of remote controls and channel-surfing would seem as anachronistic as a straight-party vote. These TV shifts really should not seem so unnerving: It's simply the medium turning the tables on a fickle audience.