Re: Average TV viewer not very intelligent

WQ wrote:
sueb wrote:

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.

The data you're citing are a good example of the adage "how to lie with statistics."

You have cited the Norman Lear and Larry Gelbart stable of comedies and dramedies. Granted, they were groundbreaking and by Lear's own words, tried to bring some of the look and feel of live theater to television. (The reason they were called "groundbreaking" was: the rest of TV was awful. Understand now?)

But unlike you, I grew up in the 1950's and 1960's. I was already in college when "All in the Family" premiered.

And the TV I got to see included: Diver Dan; The Real McCoys; Gilligan's Island; McHale's Navy; Mister Ed; My Favorite Martian; Hazel; My Mother The Car; Car 54; Beverly Hillbillies; Green Acres; Gomer Pyle; My Living Doll. In fact, the *only* drama I remember fondly from the 1960's was Star Trek.

When you get a producer or series creator who has a bold creative vision, the result sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest. Whether it's Rod Serling, Gene Roddenberry, Norman Lear, or (some say) J.J. Abrams.

You were just lucky enough to have been at an age when you could glom onto Norman Lear's comedies, and now you keep calling them out as examples of how great TV was back then. But they were considered groundbreaking specifically *because* the rest of TV was nothing like them. When Lear was producing All in the Family, there were still comedies on TV like That Girl and Alice and Julia.

When people today look back on The Twilight Zone and cite it for how innovative it was, that's says something about what the *rest* of TV was back then. And Rod Serling himself would have told you that:

http://www.rodserling.com/mwallace.htm


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.

You just admitted what I have been pointing out: You watched shows that were "stupid but campy"; you watched shows that "you didn't mind as much" as their competition; you watched shows that were "not that bad"; etc. etc. Apparently it didn't occur to you to try reading a book or a magazine, rather than watching something "stupid but campy" or a show that was "not that bad." That was my point. If you insisted on watching TV for the sake of watching TV, you could always find something to watch that "wasn't too bad."

But that's not necessary anymore. Today, if there's nothing REALLY GOOD on ABC, CBS or NBC, you don't have to sit there with your remote in hand, oscillating among those three until you settle on something that's "not too bad." You can chuck them all and have many other options. And I think that accounts for your dislike of the offerings on those three networks today: Unlike 30+ years ago, you're not forced to give any of them a try anymore. And that puts you into a different mindset. Maybe if you had been forced to choose between "Lost" and "Criminal Minds" (because that's all the TV you had available and the Internet didn't exist), you might have stuck with one of those shows for 4 or 5 episodes and then decided hey, it's "not too bad" a way to spend a Wednesday evening. But now you can just say "Not interested".


--- 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.

Most folks remember Batman as camp--trash lightened by unintentional humor, such as Adam West's paunch (and well satirized by Mad Magazine).


The Prisoner is another example of a punkish show that nobody can
repeat today.

The Prisoner was a British import. Not created by American producers or writers. I and most of my friends thought that The Avengers (with the unmatched chemistry of John Steed and Emma Peel) was hip and cool too. But oh yes that was another British import. Even Monty Python managed to be both lowbrow and sophisticated in the one show. But oh yes, that's another British import!

The pendulum has swung the other way. The number one show on Channel 4 in the UK is now: Lost. So let's leave the British imports out of this discussion. It doesn't take much creativity to import a show that's already in production elsewhere.

Hey, did you know that "All in the Family" was originally based on a British sitcom, "Till Death Do Us Part"?


--
Steven D. Litvintchouk
Email: sdlitvin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.
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