Jeopardy Deprived

I have to be one of the only people in the country who can't watch Jeopardy. I only wish I was kidding. Let me explain:

When David and I moved to Utah a year ago I realized the way that TV would be different being in the Mountain Time Zone. When shows air in the Eastern Time Zone, they air in the Central Time Zone at the same time, hence announcments like "8/7c". However, they are delayed one hour before they are aired in the Mountain Time. That means that when a show advertises being aired at 7 Central Time, it also airs at 7 Mountain Time, but by then, of course, it is 8 Cental and 9 Eastern Time. Basically what this ends up being is that everything airs "early", at least in my eyes, since I was born and raised in Eastern Time. The point to all this is that Prime Time starts at 7 here instead of 8 like in Ohio. As most people know, Jeopardy airs at 7:30pm Eastern Time. Normally, this would mean that it airs at 6:30pm Mountain Time, but because of standard 6:00 news broadcasts, Jeopardy gets lost. Up until this point, Jeopardy was being aired on KJAZZ, a local station out of Salt Lake that mostly aired Jazz games, but carried things like Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, and other UPN shows. It actually aired at 7:30, which was nice because it was something I was used to, although I had to DVR it because of prime time shows airing at the same time.

Imagine my surprise when upon returning from our recent holiday trip to Ohio, I found the phrase "This Channel is Not Longer Available" on my DirecTV guide. I'm thinking, this is stupid. I pay for a satellite and yet I can't get a local channel? How is that? David called DirecTV and found out that some contract that KJAZZ had with DirecTV had run out at the end of the year and had not been renewed. The result? I pay for hundreds of channels I never watch, but I can't get the one local channel I actually watch on a daily basis. Because of the news and prime time issues, no other local channel airs it, and while there are two stations that DO air Jeopardy (ABCE and ABCW), DirecTV can't legally give us access.

Does anything else see how retarded this is? I mean, in general, I am happy with our service and I definitely get my money's worth from my DVR....but this kind of ticks me off. What kind of person can't watch Jeopardy? It's not like they air full episodes online or anything...

*sigh*