I wonder if I'll have to do 3 entries every week. If I do then I'm going to be hard pressed to come up with that many topics. There are 10 weeks in the class, so that'd be 30 entries. I'm pretty sure I can't come up with that many topics, although I suppose if I have to I will. Maybe I'll go for a lighter topic this time.
It never ceases to amaze me how much crap there is on television these days. As part of a family that pays a great deal of money for cable television you would think that we would always be able to find something to watch. Apparently that isn't the case, as there is almost never anything that we want to watch on the weekend. Presumably somebody wants to watch the shows that are on, or they would never have been produced in the first place, but it certainly isn't me, and with 50 movie channels and 100 broadcast and specialty channels you would think that I could find something at any time of day, and yet the entire weekend can go by with nothing worth watching.
There are several problems with programming, and they aren't exactly new. For starters, the people who decide what to keep and what to stop showing make decisions in a very brief period of time. There are many examples of shows that start of slowly but have potential to become really good, but never get the chance because the first time they are shown they don't get good enough ratings. It isn't even their fault, frequently it takes a long time to build up a following, unless you spend a great deal of money on advertising leading up to the show, or have some very strong cast member that will draw an audience. Marketing can make or break a show before it even starts.
Another problem is nobody's fault really, but I don't think I have the same tastes in programming as the "average" person. I like quirky shows that aren't necessarily enjoyed by a mainstream audience. At the same time, I like a lot of the same things as everyone else, so at least there is some common ground for finding shows to watch. I've always enjoyed sitcoms, but recently the ones that are shown are not to my liking at all. It's all too Mary Tyler Moore for me, I like things to be a little more interesting. I also am a big science fiction fan, and it's practically unheard of, outside of Star Trek, to have a science fiction series. There have been a couple others, but even those were Gene Roddenberry creations for the most part, so they might as well have been Star Trek. I'm not old enough to really remember when there were other shows, like Buck Rogers or Lost in Space. How come there aren't more shows like that now? The last great science fiction show that I remember is Babylon 5, which was a very good show for the 5 seasons it was on. It was just hard to find because it was buried in syndication.
Movies aren't especially different. There are frequently good movies on, but it is much like going to the theater. There will be times when there are several good movies to see, and then big dry spells where I couldn't find anything I would watch for free, let alone pay for. And when they finally do come to cable they are played so much that you never want to see them again. A good example of that right now is the Lord of the Rings movies. They were certainly good movies, but there wasn't a second this entire weekend when there wasn't one on TV. The other stations know how popular certain movies are and don't even try to compete with the stronger shows, so there aren't any good alternatives for people who don't want to watch what the mainstream audience is watching. Usually you can find something mediocre to watch, but it seems wrong to not have a wider variety of programming at any given time.
I don't see things changing any time soon, which is too bad because I do enjoy watching TV, and there are plenty of things I would like to see, they just aren't ever on when I want to watch them. Some day when I am rich and can afford all the DVDs I would like to have I could watch whatever I want. Video on demand is a good start too, but there still isn't enough choice to be able to always find something new to watch. When you can get everything that Netflix offers on demand, I'll be a little more content. Of course, then it'll be so hard to find anything because of the sheer volume of choices it won't be a whole lot better. Then I'll just have something else to complain about instead.
Posted by Jesse Walton at April 4, 2004 11:19 PM