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Counterprogramming

Walter ShapiroPosted Saturday, Dec. 19, 1998, at 3:05 PM ET

Chatterbox will leave it to others to dwell on the black eye that CBS earned with its "ratings are our only business" decision to air pro football instead of the impeachment vote. Far more amusing were the hidden messages in some of the other Saturday afternoon TV options available to bored-with-impeachment viewers. Some PBS stations, for example, were broadcasting (nudge, nudge) This Old House. The Comedy Channel reflected its sub-conscious pro-Clinton bias when it scheduled The Gods Must Be Crazy. But Chatterbox marvels at the geniuses at TNT who decided that this was an impeachy time to re-air a 1996 made-for-TV movie titled, Houdini.

--Walter Shapiro

E-mail Timothy Noah at .

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Walter Shapiro has covered the last seven presidential campaigns and just completed a fellowship at the Joan Shorenstein Center at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He can be reached at .
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