Re: Average TV viewer not very intelligent


sueb wrote:
WQ wrote:
Steven L. wrote:
Rich wrote:

The demise of programs where you actually have to think a bit
while watching (as opposed to mindless dreck reality shows
that are successful) speaks volumes about the average TV viewer.

Yeah, we really had to think a bit while watching Lost in Space, I Love
Lucy, The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan's Island, and The Gong Show.

In 1961, which you apparently think was some kind of "golden age" of TV,
the chairman of the FCC told broadcasters the following:

"I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your
station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine,
newspaper, profit and-loss *** or rating book to distract you--and
keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can
assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.
"You will see a procession of game shows, violence,
audience-participation shows, formula comedies about totally
unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism,
murder, western badmen, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more
violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials--many screaming,
cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you will see a
few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you
think I exaggerate, try it."
-- Newton Minow, FCC Chairman, 1961

What must it be like to be one of them? To be a person who never
reads a book, who seldom reads the news and whose idea of
entertainment is watching some siliconized bimbos try to
engage in "survival" or "race" shows that are no more real
than professional wrestling?

FYI, the first true modern reality TV show was "An American Family,"
which premiered in 1973 on PBS. At the time, critics and intelligentsia
hailed it as groundbreaking. I guess the lesson here is that reality TV
is considered high-brow if it's broadcast on PBS.

While there's trash on today's TV, there was trash on TV in the 1950's,
1960's, 1970's, every decade. IMO, today's TV is the best ever. The
most sophisticated, the slickest production values.

--- You keep saying that, but unless you can come up with a 22-hour
lineup of shows you watch regularly week in and week out, then today's
TV is a failure, especially when there's a 100 times more of it than in
the 50s or 60s or 70s. For a lot of seasons I grew up through in the
60s and 70s I could come up with a 22 or 25 hour lineup and,
ratio-wise, that's what made those decades successful viewing eras,
when one could actually draw up a weekly lineup that amounted to a full
third of all the network offerings. Even coming up with 22 hours now
would only amount to a fraction of a third of a third of a third of all
network and cable offerings, so already you're at the losing end of
things. TV may be more sophisticated and slicker now, but that's not
what makes for great TV, that's just superficial glitz than any
indication of substantial content. TV should be about translating
interesting and novel ideas across to the viewer in ways that entertain
or provoke, or ideally both. TV used to be able to do that much more
frequently and successfully in the past, within the context of the
times of course, than it does now. Within the context of these times,
TV should be much further ahead in doing that than it actually is.
Where are the satires, the spoofs, the parodies, the farces, the
dramatic ironies, the intriguing allegories, the inventiveness, the
risk-taking, or even the sheer escapist fun? If you define "best TV"
as largely dreary dramas about cops, docs and lawyers and mostly
insipid sitcoms about brain-dead families that make Ozzie and Harriet
look like All in the Family by comparison, then okay, you've got your
better TV. But give me the more punkish nature of what TV used to be,
when it kicked around a lot of ideas seemingly in defiance of whether
they appealed to any demographic audience or any audience at all for
that matter. That's when shows, regardless of what kind they were,
were truer to their premise and weren't designed, as they are now often
disastrously, with a particular age group in mind.

I don't know where or what you were watching on TV during the 60s and
70s, but what was offered then was infinitely more homogenous, because
it was all offered by 3 networks + PBS, than what's on today.

You're only remembering the very best of the best and ignoring the
hours of Mannix and the Golden Girls.

--- Of course I'm going to ignore Mannix and Golden Girls, though the
first season of both were their only good season and different from
their later ones . I wasn't interested in watching crap then just as
I'm still not interested in watching crap now, but the difference is
that all the crap now is completely disprorportionate in number to the
good stuff, and the good stuff is not anywhere near as interesting or
merely entertaining to watch in relation to these times as it was in
relation to those times.

With the multitude of channels now, you don't have to watch the "dreary
dramas about cops, docs and lawyers and mostly insipid sitcoms about
brain-dead families." You can watch Lost or Desperate Housewives or
Rescue Me or The Amazing Race or the History channel 24-7. Nothing
like them was ever on TV in the 60s or 70s. If you pay for premium
channels, you have even more options.

--- You don't have to watch all those "dreary" shows, but you can't
seem to escape them either. There always seemed to be a show I could
escape to in a 3-network setup, but now it's just one offensively awful
show channel after channel and then you just give up on switching
channels. For example, let's take today, Wednesday. A typical lineup
40 years ago had me watching Batman [a stupid but smart campy show],
Patty Duke [which I didn't mind as much as the cheesy Lost in Space or
the overlong 90-minute western The Virginian], the then-new spy war
series Blue Light [forsaking Beverly Hillbillies for it], the goofy
Green Acres & the upscale *** Van Dyke [although I found competing Big
Valley not that bad of a western in its first season, but only really
caught it in summer reruns], and finally the night topped off with the
tongue-in-cheek I Spy. Three networks and three and a half hours of
satisfying viewing. What do I have to look forward to tonight on six
networks, never mind all those cable channels I seldom watch and who
knows why I have them at all? Nothing. American Idol? Give me
Shindig. George Lopez, Still Standing? Green Acres and *** Van Dyke
delivered real laughs. Lost? Hell, I think I'd even prefer Lost in
Space. Criminal Minds, CSI? Boring procedurals, give me the more
engaging likes of spy intrigue with Blue Light and I Spy. South Beach?
Maybe the 90-minute oater The Virginian doesn't seem so bad now. I'm
telling you, it's awful now. You'd think with more channels I'd have
more to watch. But the math isn't adding up.

But give me the more punkish nature of what TV used to be,
when it kicked around a lot of ideas seemingly in defiance of whether
they appealed to any demographic audience or any audience at all for
that matter.

Name one example of the "punkish nature" of TV in the 60s and 70s!
Ever see Network?

--- I already mentioned Batman. When you think about it, that was a
very punkish show at the time compared to a lot of what was on and
something that really hasn't been done in a similar way since then.
The Prisoner is another example of a punkish show that nobody can
repeat today. The Smothers Brothers began benign enough with their
comedy-variety hour but gradually evolved into TV's punk satirists.
Laugh-in was absurd punk comedy. All in the Family created an adult
form of punk comedy. *** Cavett had a prime-time summer run of his
talk show three nights per week and his was a punk version of all the
mainstream Johnny Carson/Joey Bishop/Merv Griffin talk shows that often
showcased people you would never, or rarely, ever see on the other
shows, everybody from Jimi Hendrix to Norman Mailer, Clement Freud to
"radical" John Kerry back then. These kinds of shows kept popping up
often enough to balance out the mainstream ones, certainly between the
late 50s and mid-70s period. And yes, Network is an excellent film.


Susan B.

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