24 MAR 08: EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN

So I'm dialing around the non-cable TV Saturday night. One channel has college basketball. Another is showing the classic movie "The Ten Commandments" - but I remind myself I've already read the book.

BLOG EXCLUSIVE: Then I scan the remote toward channel 16 - but the TV stops at channel 11, on a 1940-era Bugs Bunny cartoon. It's classic, timeless humor. I mean, I hadn't seen an exploding cigar on TV in years....

So what had I stumbled onto here? Many guesses came to mind:

+ 1. A weird cable bleedover. I have what appears to be a CATV cable sticking through the wall into the living room, and the TV Guide Channel has appeared in fuzzy form on my set a couple of times in recent weeks. Of course, it's never there when you want to review red-carpet awards show fashions.

+ 2. A wild "station skip." When I was a boy, my little Zenith portable set in Kansas City once picked up a station in Hamilton, Ontario. Another time, it brought me a station in Corpus Christi, Texas. But it never picked up the station my family wanted most on Sunday afternoons -- to get around home blackouts of Chiefs football games.

+ 3. Atlanta's "11 Alive," WXIA. But that station should have been showing reruns of "Law and Order" on a Saturday night -- like about 20 other cable channels.

I checked at the top of the hour to see what this thing on channel 11 really was -- and it was none of the above. It turns out a new low-power TV station is on the air in Columbus: WWCG. That's close enough to WRCG that Archway Broadcasting might want to try a lawsuit, to gain some extra money.

(Those call letters are especially ironic to me - because I attended a church denomination for years which some people called WWCG for short. But using Bugs Bunny cartoons to lure me back to church seemed a little strange....)

WWCG is showing programs from "White Springs Television," based in White Springs, Florida. Its focus is on showing old movies without any commercials. So it's a bit like Turner Classic Movies - except it lacks Ted Turner, and the movies aren't really "classics." Just because something is old doesn't always make it classic.

For example, today's movie schedule on WWCG includes "43: The Richard Petty Story." I never knew a movie was made about his life in the mid-seventies. ESPN doesn't tend to make movies about stock car racers until well after they're dead.

It appears WWCG shows old cartoons between the movies. Some of them surprised me - because I didn't realize 15-minute-long Superman cartoons were made during the 1940s. George Reeves in the TV series was nothing but a copycat. And how many children jumped off roofs and hurt themselves, following his example?

White Springs Television apparently makes its money by selling DVD collections of some old movies, and running ads between the movies and cartoons. It's actually a bit refreshing to see "Chef Tony" selling his products for only one or two minutes, instead of 30.

White Springs Television seems intent on showing family-friendly fare -- as Sunday's movie lineup was filled with Bible-based films. But the old cartoons might be a bit controversial, as a disclaimer was shown before one with a jungle setting. WWCG should stay so low-power that Bill Madison of the NAACP can't see it.

It's not clear who owns and operates WWCG, and we e-mailed White Springs Television Sunday night asking about that. The station is licensed to "MD Broadcasting." Either this is a company currently running a radio station in Mississippi - or those creative doctors who bought Summit Hospital are at it again.

What disappoints me so far about WWCG is that it might not show any local programming. But then again, maybe Carmike Cinemas is behind this station - as an educational tool about movies for its employees.

There could be one more low-power TV station on the horizon in our area. An online check found Prism Broadcasting has reserved channel 19 for WANX. I couldn't pick it up Sunday night, so perhaps I'm in the wrong part of town to see it. But then, there are nights when WYBU-TV 16 is barely visible - and as a Christian station, you'd think it would have more power.

The next broadcast station to take the air in Columbus probably will be on radio. WTMQ is promoting the return of the old "Radio Continental" on the FM dial next Saturday. It's now called "Spanish Radio" - but if it's not "radio en Español," it might not be that Spanish after all.

Now let's put down the remote, and review other discoveries from the weekend:

+ The price of diesel fuel topped four dollars a gallon in Columbus. I saw $4.11 posted outside Spectrum at Interstate 185 and Buena Vista Road. But of course, fuel prices are always jacked up a bit along the interstate - except in Tifton, where the nice managers usually have prices a good bit lower.

+ The Saturday anti-war protest downtown included a "4000 and more" sign. In fact, the U.S. military death toll in Iraq did not top 4,000 until Sunday night. Just because you're protesting outside a church does NOT mean you should try your hand at prophecy.

+ The "Real Time" telecast from Cascade Hills Church had a major surprise - as Pastor Bill Purvis presented an Easter sermon wearing a suit and tie. What did I do to this man, when I worshiped there for a few weeks last fall?

+ The Columbus Lions lost their indoor football home opener 54-48, to the Erie River Rats. This was stunning news to me, because I thought Erie was better known for lakes.

+ The Columbus Cottonmouths backed into the hockey playoffs, thanks to a Saturday night loss by Huntsville. Whoever scheduled a jersey auction following Friday night's final home game must be a closet Huntsville fan....

+ Instant Message to Google News: Did your computer do that? Did it put the headline "My trust in my Lord" in the "Entertainment" section? Or do your programmers think all the religious people go to church for the pastor's one-liners?

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BURKARD BULK MAIL INDEX: 660 (- 19, 2.8%)

TRUDGE REPORT, DAY 22: Racquetball workout, about 50 minutes. Total: 79.55 miles run, 10.8 walked

The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author -- not necessarily those of anyone else in Columbus living or dead, and perhaps not even you.

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