Posted on 11/15/2007 12:45:46 PM PST by Caleb1411
There are events in most of our lives that offer opportunities for us to change our ways. The strike by television writers affords one such opportunity.
By its very nature, television is mostly illusion. During the golden age of television (that would be the '50s and '60s), real audiences laughed (or didn't laugh) at comedy shows, which were mostly live. If you weren't funny, you didn't get laughs. But most shows were genuinely funny and devoid of bad language. The FCC had more influence then and there were only three television networks. Today, a laugh track laughs for you, whether or not anything is funny and most "comedy" is full of sexual innuendo. On cable, there is no innuendo. The f-word is used like a bludgeon.
Female "scientists" on the crime shows display enough cleavage that if the commercial were for Victoria's Secret, viewers wouldn't notice the transition. Such fantasies don't resemble any female scientist I know, nor would a professional woman dress like a hooker for the office. It's not much better in the news division, especially on cable, where female anchors and reporters resemble Barbie doll cutouts. They mostly look alike: big hair; big lips; big … well, you get the idea. The Website Radar (www.radaronline.com) recently had a quiz that asked people to distinguish between a list of female anchors and porn stars. I scored seven out of 10 correct. That's because I recognized the anchors, not the porn stars, though the two are increasingly difficult to tell apart.
Entertainment scripts are formulaic: plenty of murders, bad language, sex, explosions and gallons of blood and gore. Even when they're not "re-runs," the plots are mostly re-runs. So is the news. On broadcast TV, Bush is evil, the Iraq war is wrong, higher taxes and bigger government are
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
All true, but there was another shakeup in the early 90s when Billboard added WalMart and the other department stores to their polling data. And the TV rating system is way overdue for a shakeup.
Can you post a rebuttal of the Gilder arguments that seem wrong to you?
The quality of the entertainment isn't what it used to be. I think focus groups are the problem - they limit innovation.
“Female “scientists” on the crime shows display enough cleavage that if the commercial were for Victoria’s Secret, viewers wouldn’t notice the transition.”
Is the author saying this is a bad thing?
Aw, C’mon, you mean Jill Nicolini is on the CW11 because of her looks? Who woulda thunk it http://www.jillnicolini.com/
It seems to me that the “upset” over this strike is limited to those directly involved - no matter how much Drudge tries to push it.
I couldn’t care less about it.
Maybe it’s the next phase of the demise of the dinosaur media?
I am way ahead of it all. I got rid of the family TV many years ago. My children all grew up reading books and only one of the four now has a TV in his house. One works in a TV station but has not that instrument at home.Three of them are well up on current events and the fourth is a gamer. He doesn’t watch programs on his TV but it’s because he is frying his neurons with World Of War.
However "given a chance people talk back" making Old Media increasingly shrill and angry about losing its traditional gatekeeping role. New York Times editor Kate Phillips awkwardly discloses, "I almost wish we could go back to the days when we never heard their voices."
Given the chance a rather small percentage of the people talk back. Look how few people actually bother to vote on a regular basis, that’s the ultimate opportunity to talk back and the majority stay silent.
And there’s a major difference between the problems the newspapers are having and the problems the TV stations are having. Newspapers have been in trouble for a long time, the first difficulty they had was competing with TV. And it’s not really even the “news” aspect of the internet that’s hurting newspapers, it’s the non-news informational aspect. Back in the 80s and 90s the only time I ever got a newspaper was to find movie times or other local entertainment events, now I get all that information from the internet. Then with the 24 hours news cycle that’s on the internet even the “news” aspect of newspapers winds up in trouble, by the time the afternoon paper comes out most people have already read up on the events of the day, and reading the morning news online looks more productive at work than reading the newspaper.
But back to the TV front, the whole excerpt is wrong. Starting with the couch potatoes and going through the blatant misunderstanding of where all these cable channels come from.
Here’s a brief rebuttal on one point:
Gilder says:
All of world industry is moving increasingly toward more segmented markets. But in a broadcast medium, such a move would be a commercial disaster. In a broadcast medium, artists and writers cannot appeal to the highest aspirations and sensibilities of individuals. Instead, manipulative masters rule over huge masses of people
REBUTTAL:
In truth, the industry is moving toward more segmented markets, note the expansion of channels in the ast two decades — Disney, National Geographic, History Channel BET, CMT, etc. etc. etc. Each of these appeals to a different demographic.
Popular entertainment never appealed to the highest aspirations, etc. If that were true, every town of 100,000 would have a symphony, opera and ballet. In truth, the audiences for these entertainments are so small you need a major metropolitan area with a million of more to support them. Likewise, Bonanza and Leave it to Beaver were not appealing to the highest aspirations.
In my family when there is nothing on TV, which is often, we returned to the golden age of radio - and we LOVE IT!
You don’t here anti-American, anti-Christian trash and vulgar language from Abbott and Costello, Charlie McCarthy, Jack Benny, Fibber McGee and Molly, or our friends down at Duffy’s Tavern. Just good clean fun. We usually listen to the direct feed from our satellite radio, but we also have a large collection purchased on line through ebay or at, http://www.radiospirits.com/
I have also a large collection of some of my favorite TV shows from the past thanks to DVD.
"Though the use of canned laughter reached its peak in the 1960s, the trend began to reverse with the 1971 debut of All in the Family." - Wikipedia
I don’t think I turned on TV all week. I didn’t even watch football on Sunday. That Olbermann is involved even a little bit has been a damper on the whole concept for me, I think.
A most intriguing open question to me is the answer to: "How much of Aubrey's wild success came as a result of a limited choice between three networks and how much came from an easily amused low brow population"?
By virtue of your frequent appearance on FR's Hollywood threads you became a sort of representative voice of the industry to me. I'm interested in your take on this argument:
The entertainment industry pays them well, not to create innovative programming, but to endlessly work and rework a few proven themes.
IMHO the proven theme of "unfulfilled love" gets endlessly work and reworked. Sometimes my mind's eye makes a Smallville scene melt into a big fat Euclidean triangle during the umpteenth existential despair performance by Clark, Lana, and Lex. LOL.
I need to ponder this further. (Actually I need to get back to work before angry frustrated clients start feeding me to the lions. LOL.)
I watch alot of TV but I do so with DVR and the stuff I watch has over time drifted more to history and science based programing. My fav channels are the History brand (History, History International, etc.) the Science Channel, NASA channel, A&E, Discovery, The Military Channel and then the HD movie Channels (I am a sucker for a good movie) Then we watch a few prime time shows but they dwindle down each year. We still watch Survivor but in DVR format and fast forward through the bickering and such, we love the competitions. (Except when they eat gross stuff then we FF through that as well)
I checked out Kid Nation to see what all the controversy was about but found it interesting in that the Kids usually went 100% in the opposite direction when choosing rewards and such (Toothbrushes over fun stuff and the like) There is some fairly intelligent Kids on the show at least what they show of them that is.
Truthfully, I believe 99% of the stuff coming out of Hollywood is crap. Independent films used to be good, in their own way, but the money became too big and they became crap, too.
Maybe that’s the way it should be, but I’m not an advocate for the industry. I am an advocate for understanding the industry. I am shocked (shocked I tell ya) at the fact that people will educate their kids on everything from the proper diet to gun safety, but neglect to educate them about the media. I mean, it’s not hard: Ask the kid one simple question: What do television stations sell? The answer, of course, is you — the viewer. They sell viewers to advertisers. That is the sole reason they are in business, though many adults don’t seem to realize this extraordinarily simple fact.
FYI: The last movie I thought was any good at all was The Aviator.
Keep them clients happy. Then go here http://dsc.discovery.com/ . Your guy talks about how the American people have many different interests, but he says the networks can’t handle that. Just look at the top of that page, look at all the different channels that one TV network owns, all catering to slightly different audiences. And of course they’re not the only conglomerate with multiple channels, there’s Universal ( http://www.nbcuni.com/), and then there’s the Disney Empire (owns everything that is related to Disney, ABC, and ESPN). Then of course there’s thing like the NFL Network, Fox College (for the college sports fan), G4 (formerly TechTV, TV for nerds), Game Show Network and the host of other small timers generally waiting to be gobbled up by one of the movers and shakers.
What’s hard right now in the TV world is being a MAJOR network that draws in large audiences. There’s a whole host of networks drawing in 1ish share, which is exactly what random chance says they should average.
TV writers merely fill in the blanks of formatted shows, contriving shocks and sensations to satisfY a mass audience. The entertainment industry pays them well, not to create innovative programming, but to endlessly work and rework a few proven themes.
And suffice it to say that those "proven themes" do not appeal to the higher intellectual centers of the consuming public, but to an area below the navel and above the knees.
Viewers don't want this stuff. Only the brain-dead find it funny, and there aren't enough brain-dead consumers (with the exception of the Democratic Party) to constitute a statistically significant demographic.
Any show you see on TV has been focus-grouped to within an inch of its life.
Then every show should be a runaway success. They aren't. In fact, most sink faster than the Kursk.
This stuff isn’t random.
That's even MORE of an indictment. If the industry, after using the most cutting-edge techniques and intense market analysis, can't deliver anything better than the dreck that permeates TV, then the industry is to entertainment what the Yugo is to fine automobiles.
Viewership is dwindling, but there are several forces at work:
You forgot the most obvious: people are turning away from fare that insults them, bores them, nauseates them, and ultimately, challenges them only in the sense that they must struggle to keep their lunch down.
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