The "Weekly" Show with Jon Stewart #More4 #Fail

As a political geek one of my secret passions, though I guess not now, is to sit down at 8:30 to watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on More4. It's on late enough that if I am in on the evening I will have caught my daily news fix, or if I've done a little campaigning I can often fit in in just after I've finished, then do the news junkie bit.

Rumours that all Americans don't get sarcasm and satire are quickly dispensed by watching this show. The fact it is on Daily means that it covers a lot of ground to fill its slot. Of course some of it is better satirically than other parts of it, but all of it makes you sit up and think.

Therefore this morning when someone pointed out this Guardian story that instead of the four nights of the The Daily Show Tues to Friday with the round up The Daily Show: Global Edition on Monday, we were being restricted to a diet of just the latter I was upset. The reason being that they wanted to schedule more high end American programming. So I wrote the following to Channel 4.

I understand from this morning's Guardian that the Channel is to cut our daily doses of the high-end American satirical take on politics down to the once weekly highlight package the Global Edition.

I'm rather disappointed at this decision as this is the one show I tend to come home to sit down and watch either before or between catching up on the rolling news channels. The Global Edition while invariably picking up what the US editors believe to be the highlights often miss out some of the things that I personally enjoy from the shows through the week. Some of the stuff that has been missed out often leads me to looking more in depth at some of the actual news coverage of that item, because it is often lacking from the UK centric news that is available most readily.

I would ask you please to reconsider this decision.

I got a curtesy email saying someone would get back to me within 7 days. I thought that isn't isn't going to happen, but then I returned from lunch to find this:

Dear Mr Glenn,

Thank you for contacting Channel 4 Viewer Enquiries regarding THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART.

Thank you for your e-mail.  We are sorry to read that you are disappointed about More4's decision to discontinue showing The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, however, you will still be able to view The Daily Show Global edition every Monday night from the new year.

Please be assured your complaint has been logged and noted for the information of those responsible for our programming.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact us. We appreciate all feedback from our viewers; complimentary or otherwise.

Regards,

Grace Dawson
Channel 4 Viewer Enquiries

Please note that while my initial email did acknowledge the Global Edition I said that in my opinion it was not enough. The Global Edition does tend to emphasis the world news featured more in the week and miss out a lot of the localised American stuff, but often this content is what makes me dig deeper, I'm that sort of creature. Curiosity doesn't kill this cat, it's what I thrive on.

Clearly I have merely got a standard response from somebody trying to clear their inbox before they leave for Christmas. Sadly it failed to address the point I was making. People who take the line that they 'appreciate all feedback from our viewers; complimentary or otherwise', should really learn to listen to that rather than regurgitate standard responses because the name of a programme or product crops up in the right box.