I'm presuming you *can* watch the show if you want, the stations which broadcast it have simply elected not to.

There are lots of shows over history which have had great ratings and still got dropped (queue the reference to the 1979 Battlestar Galactica, which had ratings to-kill-a-family-member-for, but still lasted a scant single season)... There are plenty of other mitigating factors (costs of production, or in this case of rebroadcast rights, public relations costs, etc.)

Do you feel that the companies who have endorsement contracts with Kobe Bryant are (right,wrong)[circle one] for ending their contracts with him while the criminal charges still wind their way through the system? If your answer is "right", please be clear in specifying *why* you think the situations are different.

Sadly, I *can't* watch it - kind of the point. The only way to see it up here in Canada (at least where I live) is to watch it on Canadian channels, and every single one of these channels just dropped the show. However, if you live in the US, you're right - it's a bunch of hullabulloo about nothing.

And endorsement contracts are a *completely* different thing - you are in effect paying Mr. Bryant to stake his personal reputation on your product. Martha Stewart's show wasn't endorsing the Canadian channels, nor was she herself doing so.

No... my statement stands. You *can* watch it. you can pay someone in the US to tape the show and send it to you, or you can try to build a really sensitive antenna and aim it towards the border and pick up the signal from over here.

You *can* watch it, it's not forbidden. The companies that used to help you out have simply stopped doing so, for reasons that are their own.

A station's programming reflects upon that station directly. If your local station started showing "Pagan Ritual Black Masses" as a prime-time offering, would you think badly of the station who broadcast it? You might say that there's a world of difference between Martha Stewart and the Black Mass, and that's true, but the point is that a station's programming *does* reflect upon that station, for good or bad.

The canadian station(s) in question have simply decided they're not willing to risk their reputation on her success in court. Or, it could simply be a matter of not wanting to pay out on a contract that might get cut short in the middle if she has to start doing her show from an 8x8 in Prison Orange.

There's lots of perfectly valid reasons for them to take the show off the air.

That is silly, as you have stated. But if she turns out to be guilty, are you ok with them dropping it? How about cable TV or satelite? Surely it is still available there.

Hi JPC, unfortunately, these *are* cable networks. Yes, I have cable, but as I live in an apartment, no satellite is available.

*laughs*

But guys, that's really not the point. My point was that the ratings in Canada (according to the Star article) are still good for the show. They dropped it anyway.

For "political" reasons that have *nothing* to do with the show itself.

Unless suddenly we've discovered that 101 ways to organize your closet in pastel is suddenly (when played backwards perhaps?) a covert way of teaching Canadians how to fraud our own government?

Martha Stewart *may* have done something illegal (though Canada, like our neighbours to the south, believe in *innocent* until proven guilty - or, we're supposed to) but the show her company produces has not.

Besides which, hello? Different country here?

;-)