Why does TV suck nowadays?

Point44

Point44

Joined
Jan 15, 2003
Messages
1,690
I've been getting depressed lately with the quality of the shows on TV and the way that all the good shows are actually cancelled before being given a real chance.

What sucks is that a lot of the shows get cancelled after 1 season after a cliffhanger episode.

I used to watch a sci-fi show called Now and Again and they ended that after 1 season. Cliffhanger episode. And just when they introduced Mick Foley.

Then recently they decided to cancel Touching Evil.

They also cancelled Firefly.

Also heard there were uncertainties with Tru Calling. Not what i call a superb show but there's Eliza Dushku in it.

They also cancelled Chicago Hope which i thought was in every way superior to ER.

Damn...i just wish it was the good ol' days when there was Homicide, Kung Fu etc. and none of those crap reality shows they have now. Although i do think Joan of Arcadia is actually quite good.
 
Point44 said:
I've been getting depressed lately with the quality of the shows on TV....
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Dude at 25 I couldn't even tell you what shows were on tv, my god man what are you doing at home watching tv at your age? :eek: :)
 
TV is sh!t for the simple reason that that's what people want to watch. It's fairly simple. Shows that attract lots of viewers attract lots of advertising which attracts lots of money for the tv network owners.

There are vast numbers of mindless idiots who actually like watching those appalling reality shows so that's what gets aired. TV very graphically illustrates which end of the IQ scale the majority of the tv watching population inhabit.

Here is a great way to fix the problem. Switch the bloody thing off and go do something interesting.
 
My mother disabled our TV when I was 6 years old (1960) and I was brought up with out one. I thank her to this day. Last spring we pulled the plug and I am now aware of the time I have wasted. You can loose years of your life and do great harm to your mind if you are not careful.
 
I'm cursed. I find a show I like and then it immediatley gets cancelled. Usually suddenly and with a cliffhanger ending. Farscape for example. The lovely lady who lets me live in my house with her buys shows on DVD. I don't think she understands that most people don't watch an entire series in one run. We recently watched the entire Buffy the Vampire Slayer series over a couple of weeks. What I'm saying is that I know who wears the pants in this family, and she has the remote control.

When I can control the TV about the only things I watch are the Discovery and History channels. They don't make good series anymore.
 
Yes, the art of conversation is gone, kids eat with one eye on the plate and one eye on Buffy (Buffy for crying out loud!) Questions are met with grunts.

Plus all these reality TV shows WTF do they think we live each day, why one would want to sit down and watch a bunch of shallow morons on TV is beond me.

That said I do watch lots of National Geographic, Discovery, History and now and then Animal Planet. Five billion channels and if there is nothing appealing on 4 I switch off.
 
gajinoz said:
Here is a great way to fix the problem. Switch the bloody thing off and go do something interesting.
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Gajinoz, were you and I twins, separated at birth?

maximus otter
 
We must have been the last on the block to get a TV. Strictly limited selection of shows which were allowed. Limited number of shows. (Go outside and play!)

The only indulgence ... Sunday night Maverick, the last show before bedtime, then our parents put on Dragnet. They pretended not to notice as we knelt in our bedroom doorway, peeking past the slit of a door opening to watch "surreptitiously".

There is so much good on TV these days that I'm amazed I have no cable connection and therefore (in this area) no reception. Please, please, tell me again how much I'm missing. :)
 
I confess to watching quite a bit of TV, but very little of the network stuff. I like a lot of the cable channels like History and Discovery, movies, tech shows, auto racing, etc.
They were just talking about this with a couple of writers on one of those NPR shows; and one advanced the idea that there's a lack of good writers.

Back in the good old days, with three networks, the few really good writers could find ready employment. You would see the same names on a variety of shows. Now, with 100+ channels, and 24/7 programming, it's tough to find and keep quality people.

Then there's the costs. Everything, (like everything else) is more expensive, so sponsors want an immediate return on their ad bucks. There's no longer time to nurture shows and build audiences, at least in the eyes of the bottom-line freaks.

That's why crapola "reality" shows are so popular, they're cheap.
 
Frank Lloyd Wright said "TV is chewing gum for the eyes." but I have often misquoted it as "TV is chewing gum for the mind."
I have found even 'good' TV, like History Channel, Discovery, NatGeo and Animal Planet are Time Vampires. The return is minimal twixt the knowledge gained and the time I could have used doing something 'real' (like spending time on a computer forum). My wife wants something mindless when she gets home from work. Too much reality all day. SVU, CI and Law & Order are better fare than the rest. News? N othing E ntertaining or W orth S eeing.
:D
 
remember having a black and white set in about '74-75 (I was born in '70) then some sat morning cartoons (which were probably made in the '40s) like bugs bunny. then always outside playing or doing something with family or friends. TV was gone in 78 as parents couldn't afford one. then when I was in JR high I got a little portable 4" black and white which I used to watch while doing something constructive (my mom taught me how to weave seats in chairs i.e. caning, rushing, herringbone using mainly bamboo like materials) so had to occupy mind while fixing other peoples chairs, she paid me so I bought all my school supplies and clothes. I agree shows were better then things like Star Trek and TV was only watched the last hour before going to bed. kind of glad I grew up with minimal use of a TV it made me develop a creative side. as for today I admit I watch way too much of the damn box, but I find plenty of time to be constuctive. :D
 
I can remember what a Big thing it was when we got a second channel..then it came in color. Yowza!
I now have a perfectly good Satellite system lying idle, Merek is so right about the Time Vampire aspect of it. Almost any half decent book is more than the equal of 99% of tv fare in my opinion. Both in entertainment and in, I'll be a snob and call it the area of mental health. The odd movie is all that gets on the screen now.
This all sounds holier than thou I know, so let me make clear I was as once addicted too, the hours I idiotically spent not even watching, just menu surfuing in the hopes of finding something better on.. :(
 
I agree with Gajinoz on these one.

They say that the more channels there are, the worse they become. When I was a kid we used to go to a local store to watch the TV that they had on the window, there were only two channels then, and we couldn´t watch for long.

There are some shows I do like, like Monk and some in the History channel, I still watch Star Trek reruns, some of the children shows in Discovery Kids are fine, and some of the educational channels are OK too. So if you put some time limit and choose intelligently you can actually watch good things and also have some time to do something productive or at least more interactive.

A lot of people turn on the TV without knowing what´s on and sit back to watch whatever just to pass the time, they are wasting their life away.

Also many let the kids watch too much or use the TV as a nanny to keep them quiet, they are helping them waste their life away.

Luis
 
T. Erdelyi said:
Dude at 25 I couldn't even tell you what shows were on tv, my god man what are you doing at home watching tv at your age? :eek: :)
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When you start living in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire then you tell me what i can do at night.
There's nothing to do here at nights and TV is practically the only thing you can do.
After a whole day in the lab i don't really have the energy to do anything else like go out. The only other entertainment here in Stoke that's open after five is the bowling alley.
Back home in Malaysia is a different story. I tend to go out a lot.

There are advantages on TV though...the other day i saw a really good documentary on the History Channel. I wonder if anyone watched it. It was from The Masters series and this time it was on Masamune. They showed the process of making the samurai sword and it was bloody impressive especially the forging and quenching parts.

So...if anyone has any suggestions for me to do something else other than watching TV please do inform me. Then maybe i can reduce my TV time.

It's just that i recently saw a rerun of Homicide and forgot how good tv used to be. I like watching documentaries and cookery shows but a lot of it are repeats.
 
The only thing I really miss is bull riding on Sunday afternoon. We have been hitting the video store up about twice a week. Our 10 year old daughter is the only child left at home and there is not much in the new release section that is acceptable. Her big thing lately has been Jerry Lewis movies. My how the world has changed.
 
gajinoz said:
TV is sh!t for the simple reason that that's what people want to watch. It's fairly simple. Shows that attract lots of viewers attract lots of advertising which attracts lots of money for the tv network owners.
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I am not certain that this is necessarily true. The advertizing dollars go tot he shows that attract the sort of audience that can be persuaded to buy whatever is being advertized. That is why we see very few shows on TV that require a reasonably high intelligence level ro a relative level of maturity of their viewers. Such people are rather less subject to manipulation by the advertizing. An example of this was the show, "Murder She Wrote". It was moderately intelligent and its cast consisted of established and even some over-the-hill actors and actresses not Barbie and Ken look-alikes. The show appealed to an audience of over 35 years of age and of reasonable intelligence, so the advertizers wanted no part of it. The prime target for TV advertizers is the young male, 15-25, closely followed by the young female of a similar age. These are the ones with the money, with no real brand loyalty, and no real experience upon which to base their decisions to buy. Why do you think that credit card companies are so damned eager to get college kids hooked on using the damned things?

There are vast numbers of mindless idiots who actually like watching those appalling reality shows so that's what gets aired. TV very graphically illustrates which end of the IQ scale the majority of the tv watching population inhabit.
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Again, it is not the majority or the size of the market that the programers seek, it is the audience with the proper components to make it a good potential market that controls the programming.

Here is a great way to fix the problem. Switch the bloody thing off and go do something interesting.
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Or spend some time watching PBS.

BTW, if you seriously think that History Channel is presenting real history, I have a bridge to sell you.
 
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