Western apathy?

My contribution to fellow BHW writer Gary Dobbs' initiative this week of Wild West Monday (a promotional endeavour to raise awareness of westerns) was to set up the Black Horse Express blog. But I thought I'd also have a little dabble testing the water by mentioning westerns on a few entertainment forums, just to see what happened. I guess the answer was nothing.

The nearest to a bite came in a popular British entertainment chatroom where I asked whether anyone had read a western recently and if not, why not? (And bear in mind this is a place where if you post on a matter of major cultural concern such as: Grace from British reality tv show Big Brother was wrong to look at Nikki a little oddly on Day 23 of the show three years ago, then the result is that within minutes you'll be embroiled in a bitter argument with several dozen people). So what was the response?

I got three answers, all polite and well-written and without smilie faces. One person had read one and wasn't moved to read another. One person used to liked JT Edson, but hadn't read one for years. And another used to read a lot but hadn't for a long time. So there it is: all problems are an opportunity, and there's plenty of opportunity there. And on the plus side over a hundred people read the thread and nobody wrote in to say they hated westerns or to say they'd be better if they featured characters from Big Brother. Maybe next Wild West Monday I'll try to find a western / BB link!