[mreposter]

When I switched from Time Warner cable to D* back in 2000, one of the first new channels I gravitated to was TRIO. The funny thing was, about once a year they completely changed formats. For awhile it was an artsy-fartsy cultural channel. Then they started showing all sorts of imports from other countries. Near the end they switched to the Brilliant But Cancelled format showing failed pilots or other obscure tv shows.

For the cultural stuff, D*'s recent addition of Ovation has filled in nicely. Bravo used to be a cultural channel too, but now they're all reality.

The shows I miss the most are the ones that Trio picked up from Canada (Traders featured David Cubitt who now plays the cop on Medium) the UK, Australia (Good Guys/Bad Guys) and even New Zealand (Duggan.) I'm really surprised there's not more of a market for these shows in the USA, they should be cheap to license.

 

[petergaryr]

What I miss from Trio are the "cancelled too soon" shows.

 

[bwaldron]

What I miss from Trio are the "cancelled too soon" shows.

Yep, "Brilliant but Cancelled" had some great stuff on it.

 

[paulman182]

The only thing I ever watched was reruns of SCTV.

 

[bidger]

I'd pretty much forgotten Trio! until I saw this thread. I don't miss their obnoxious channel bug.

 

[bobnielsen]

There are some voids which still need to be filled, but I figure there were not enough viewers to make Trio viable.

I would like to see somebody pick up some of the recently cancelled series that still had some un-aired episodes when they were dropped (Heist, Back to You, etc.)

Does anyone else remember when A&E was the home for cultural programming?

 

[mreposter]

Does anyone else remember when A&E was the home for cultural programming?

Yeah, back in the day, A&E, Bravo and Trio were all premium versions of PBS with lots of cultural programming. They were even causing problems for PBS because they were buying up all the best programming and driving up the costs.

 

[SamC]

I always thought the Trio concept of importing English language drama series from Canada, Australia, etc, was a good one. The costs of liscensing the shows, since the production costs were already covered by the home market, should have been tiny.

Just the number of Canadians that live in the US Sun Belt should have made the concept successful.

 

[bwaldron]

Just the number of Canadians that live in the US Sun Belt should have made the concept successful.

Many of those Canadians continue to use their Canadian DBS systems (Star Choice or ExpressVu) here in the U.S.

 

[fluffybear]

I'd pretty much forgotten Trio! until I saw this thread. I don't miss their obnoxious channel bug.

+1