To bite the dust

To bite the dust

Another sitcom bites the dust. That’s what I said right at the opening of today’s program, and what I mean by that is, another sitcom is ending or is dying. When something bites the dust, it’s over—it’s ending, or it failed. And you usually use this phrase when you have a series of similar things ending. In this case, The Big Bang Theory didn’t fail—it was number one last year—but it’s ending. And a lot of similar shows are ending, so you would say that in May, The Big Bang Theory will bite the dust.

Here are a few other examples of bite the dust. In the United States, our traditional big department stores are in big trouble. A lot of them are closing stores, shrinking their footprint, or going out of business entirely. This month, Carson Pirie Scott, a popular department store in the Chicago area for over 150 years, will close all is stores for good. Another department store bites the dust. It’s just the latest to close forever, since those stores are not popular any more.

If you’re a fan of a manual transmission and you want a new car, you have fewer and fewer options these days, since most new cars at least in my country come only in automatic transmission. And last week luxury carmaker Audi announced it would not offer a manual transmission in any of its cars. Another one bites the dust: one more car maker is switching to automatic-only.

What else can we say bites the dust? Oh, local newspapers. This one is kind of unfortunate, but regional and local newspapers in the US are going out of business. In the last ten years, 1,800 newspapers have bitten the dust; they have gone out of business.

That’s all for today’s Plain English. If you haven’t seen The Big Bang Theory, you can check out the final season—it starts later in September, but there are probably reruns on free television in your country.

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JR and I will be back on Monday with Episode 82, where we’ll talk about the health benefits of drinking alcohol. Yeah right—actually a new study says all those supposed health benefits are not there after all.