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“The American press is all about lies! All they tell is lies, lies and more lies!” —Baghdad Bob
What’s funny is, he’s right....
When the cable was out for a while we actually watched the primary networks.
It is not possible to have lower quality programming.
Only a drooling imbecile could stand an hour of it.
The best entertainment was Mooing at the Soaps and swearing at the "News".
The only things that I’ve watched recently were reruns of “Firefly” and “Batman: the Animated Series” that I hadn’t seen the first time around, and “Tin Man” on Sci-fi, which I actually enjoyed. It could’ve been a little better, but it could’ve been much, much worse. It wasn’t a typical re-imaging or updating at all. The funny thing is that the “Tin Man” wasn’t really the main character at all, and it wasn’t about him (although he did have a substantial part of the story line).
The fact that those shows can be seen as "the good old days" really tells the tale. I can't watch anything on network TV with my kids nowadays.
These also don't require writers, actors or directors, in the usual sense, and therefore are exempt from the usual contract negotiations.
Oh yay, more "Dateline" and "20/20"
Almost all of my TV viewing involves the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, the Science Channel and similar cable stations.
I almost never watch the 3 networks. Their natioal news is slanted leftward, and most of their shows (sitcoms, “reality shows”) are aimed at people with room temperature IQs.
Have no idea what they have on their evening shows. Sitcomm’s make me want to puke they are really, really low IQ. trash..
The word cheap comes to mind. That’s all they producing now is cheap programing “Reality shows”.
I highly doubt it will be as drastic as this writer thinks. Besides, the networks will just air their shows on cable and those of us who enjoy primetime viewing will have to pay up to access the programs.
Nipples on the network - coming soon!
The networks will eventually be a combination of YouTube and MySpace.
That's already happened to a large degree. Most local affiliates will most of their day with syndicated programming. Nearly all are on the air 24 hours a day, with the network providing a smaller and smaller slice of the programming pie. Morning and evening news, the 8-11 prime time block, and sporting events -- that's all most stations get from the network. Maybe one or two daytime soaps, but there are fewer of those than there used to be.
I don't remember the last time I saw a theatrical movie aired on a big-three network. They used to be a mainstay. For that matter, made for TV movies and miniseries have largely shifted to the cable nets. With video rentals and sales, downloads and on-demand cable, who wants to sit through commercials?
Network evening news broadcasts will go dark after the '08 elections and their news divisions will be disbanded.
Not a chance it will happen that fast. The Big Three evening newscasts combined still draw about ten times the audience of the cable news networks.
But the more important fact to remember is that the news divisions don't just work to produce that one half-hour a day. The morning shows make real money, and they have enough local affiliates to offer local weather and traffic, stuff folks want to know when they're getting ready for work and which cable can't deliver. News magazine shows are cheap enough to produce that they can be profitable even if they're not huge ratings winners.
What you probably will see in short order is a continuation of the trend of the last 20 years -- fewer bureaus, fewer correspondents in the field, more reliance on agencies and affiliates. More talking heads and celebrity fluff, because those are a lot less expensive than putting a lot of crews on a lot of planes.
It's pretty much the same phenomenon that has happened to newspapers. Few newspapers have correspondents or even stringers spread out across the country -- they use the AP for out-of-town newsgathering. Or big companies like Gannett, McClatchy, the NYT and the Trib share stories between their papers. When your local paper puts together its national and international sections, they do far more aggregating than reporting.
You mean their "dem shill (KISS DEM BUTT) divisions will be disbanded. Oh the horror....
They need to cut expenses, and I know just how they can do it: Replace the evening shows with stand up comedians that tell lots of hate America, hate Bush, hate Conservatives, hate Businesses jokes. There is a downside: Viewers wouldn’t notice much of a change.