What is Going on with Television Nowadays?
It seems that having good ratings is necessary to staying on the air. Many shows never make it past the first season, much less the first episode, ala The Mike O’Malley show, so conjuring up interesting ideas is needed. These ideas impact new shows and also well-established ones. Unfortunately, some of these ideas are so stupid, that if the ratings would ever fall, there’s really nothing else they could do.
Look at Monday Night Football for example. Al Michaels has years of broadcasting experience, yet the need to bring in comedian Dennis Miller, who has absolutely no sports background to his name, and only having a bitterly sarcastic repartee, seemed appropriate. In fact, the only sports he’s witnessed is the MTV’s Rock and Jock Softball extravaganza. And I don’t even think this constitutes as sports, because half the starting lineup are Playboy Playmates, whose boobs are as real as Milli Vanilli’s career. So who’s to blame? Al Michaels? BC? Milli Vanilli thought they should ‘Blame It On the Rain,’ but we all know how that turned out.
Now, by adding Dennis Miller to the lineup, this proves to me that ABC believes that Al Michaels and Dan Fouts are as exciting as the 2000 election, in which I felt, being a democrat, I got screwed. But, then again, anytime you have a Bush and a Dick in the White House, someone’s going to get screwed.
Programs have become so boring nowadays; networks have reverted to reality shows for high ratings, like Survivor. I don’t know why people were so obsessed with this show, it’s been done before. I believe the first person to get kicked off the island was Herve Villachaise. And a reality show? Following around a naked, gay guy. Whose reality is this? I’ve never been inclined to wake up and find the closest gay man to build a raft out of nothing. I mean if this is reality, I’ll leave the island voluntarily.
Talking about boring programming, we now have a 24-hour weather channel. I read that the founders wanted this to occur sooner, but they didn’t have the technology. Didn’t have the technology? All they had to do was set up a camcorder and have it shoot outside. You’d get the same effect as the program now, ending with the channel being changed after five minutes of exposure.
If you look at programs nowadays, they’re always trying to do something. The only show that didn’t do something was Seinfeld. Seinfeld was a show about nothing. I’d like to think this show was about nothing, but every time I sat down and watched it, I saw something. Even though that something really wasn’t anything, the fact that I saw something made it not nothing, which gave Seinfeld its own thing. Imagine that, a half hour show about nothing. Isn’t that something?
And if a program doesn’t have a crazy premise, it’s something else that brings a falling show back into business. These ratings come from the show’s newsmaker, like Ally McBeal’s Calista Flockhart, who is still being criticized for malnutrition, forcing her to quiver in a manner that similar to a flamenco gathering in the lower valley hosted by Jennifer Lopez’ buttocks. It’s
almost as if she ran over the gypsy in Richard Bachman’s Thinner. People still watch this show just to see how thin she’ll get, ultimately hoping she’ll get down to her skeletal domain’s counterpart, Mumra from the Thundercats.
The Ellen show had its share with the show’s newsmaker, when Ellen DeGeneres came out of the closet. As soon as she and her character announced she was gay, the show actually had one of its highest ratings. Unfortunately, it was cancelled shortly after that, wondering if the writers feared that if they urged on this subject, they would’ve taken a good licking.
Shows about shows have rendered high ratings because of a casts’ mishaps. I turned on E entertainment and saw a True Hollywood story on the Different Strokes’ kids. How would you have liked to been adopted by this family? Dana Plato, who played Kimberly, had more problems with illegal products than United States Immigration. Todd Bridges, who played Willis, went from shooting a series to a series of shootings. And Gary Coleman, his career was just left short. I wonder where Mr. Drummond went wrong.
And it’s not just limited to creative programming. News broadcasts try to gain ratings by informing the public of bizarre newscasts. I remember a huge story was when Melissa Etheridge reported that she had David Crosby’s children. Apparently, David Crosby wants to start a new band called, Crosby Still Has Young.
But there are so many potential advancements in broadcasting; it’s a shame we have to be a part of these advancements. We need to bring back shows like I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke. Where have all the cowboys gone?
