2008 Woodie Awards
Dear discerning people who watch TV
Letters from MAX
MAX neibaur
Issue date: 2/20/08 Section: Opinion
I feel your pain-well; I feel your "frustrated that TV sucks now" pain. I've been watching television for a long time. I'm not too picky. I'll watch just about whatever the programming directors throw out there…until recently. I just can't do it anymore.
I mostly blame lousy contemporary television on people who came of age in the 1980s and females with shoddy taste (that doesn't mean all females!).
When I was younger, I'd watch stupid sitcoms such as "Wings" because nothing better came on during a certain timeslot, and I would be reasonably amused. Back then, however, I also got to watch new episodes of quality programs such as "Seinfeld" and "The Simpsons." "The Simpsons" still runs new episodes, but it has lost its luster considerably over the years and has been surpassed by "Family Guy."
Some other animated shows on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim make me laugh; however, their esoteric humor has become forced and more homogenous as the network urges writers to come up with more shows and more episodes due to Adult Swim's increasing niche popularity.
In the recent past, I did not care as much about the ratio of crap to decent stuff on television because I could always watch reruns of classic shows on TV Land-not anymore. In an effort to reach the demographic of people who grew up in the 1980s as effectively as sister cable network VH1, TV Land stopped airing all but the most popular old shows in favor of movies such as "The Breakfast Club" and "Sixteen Candles" and a brand new show, due to premier March 5, called "High School Reunion."
"High School Reunion" appears to be a scripted program that looks and feels like a reality show in which people from the graduating class of 1987 (the year choice is no surprise) come together. I can't imagine how anyone would want to listen to a bunch of fake people who went to high school in the 1980s talk about how cool materialism is or whatever else those people talk about, but something tells me it will get good ratings because its social dynamic will draw in females.
I mostly blame lousy contemporary television on people who came of age in the 1980s and females with shoddy taste (that doesn't mean all females!).
When I was younger, I'd watch stupid sitcoms such as "Wings" because nothing better came on during a certain timeslot, and I would be reasonably amused. Back then, however, I also got to watch new episodes of quality programs such as "Seinfeld" and "The Simpsons." "The Simpsons" still runs new episodes, but it has lost its luster considerably over the years and has been surpassed by "Family Guy."
Some other animated shows on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim make me laugh; however, their esoteric humor has become forced and more homogenous as the network urges writers to come up with more shows and more episodes due to Adult Swim's increasing niche popularity.
In the recent past, I did not care as much about the ratio of crap to decent stuff on television because I could always watch reruns of classic shows on TV Land-not anymore. In an effort to reach the demographic of people who grew up in the 1980s as effectively as sister cable network VH1, TV Land stopped airing all but the most popular old shows in favor of movies such as "The Breakfast Club" and "Sixteen Candles" and a brand new show, due to premier March 5, called "High School Reunion."
"High School Reunion" appears to be a scripted program that looks and feels like a reality show in which people from the graduating class of 1987 (the year choice is no surprise) come together. I can't imagine how anyone would want to listen to a bunch of fake people who went to high school in the 1980s talk about how cool materialism is or whatever else those people talk about, but something tells me it will get good ratings because its social dynamic will draw in females.
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