Why American Network TV Sucks?

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If this has been posted before, let e know and I'll finish this conversation there, but:

Why is it that people are switching off network TV and going to cable and Internet?

I have a few things:

1. Content. For some strange reason, TV has gotten cleaner. In the 90s, TV in the 10e/9c spots shown nudity and foul language (well, not as much as you might think...). Now the same shows that air at 2 p.m. air at 2 a.m. Every time I see or hear how a TV show is sexual and controversial, it's not even on par with a made-for-tv movie edit of an R-rated film. I'm not saying there should be hardcore porn on tv, but a little HBO-like TV shows wouldn't hurt.

2. Writing. The scripts haven't left the 90s. I swear it feels like everything on network TV is like a channel dedicated to the 90s without the raunchy content.

3. Availibility. On Demand content has hurt network TV my making their shows available to watch anytime they want.

Agree/Disagree

4. Every new show is a re-shuffling of the same old characters, plots, and tropes that have been shown for the last 30 years. Family sitcoms, for instance, almost all feature a doofus dad, a hot-bodied mom, a brainiac child, a troublesome child, and an innocent child. Lawyer shows, cop shows, doctor shows ... except for the professions, the stories are all practically the same: someone dies or is murdered, a corpse is shown, a frantic search ensues for the cure or the culprit, and a dramatic and/or violent confrontation wraps things up in 43 minutes.

5. Each season of an action-adventure show progressively escalates the degree of incipient doom until The Fate of the Universe hangs in the balance, only to be settled by a thinly-disguised application of Ye Olde Deus Ex Machina, or by an epic one-on-one between the Really Big Bad Villain and the character whom you'd least expect to be the Really Big Bad Good Guy.

6. Cartoons are no longer plain, dumb fun (i.e., gratuitous violence, slapstick humor, stereotypes, et cetera); instead, they all seem devoted to the idea that they must somehow promote teach tolerance, teamwork, sacrifice, and other ethical concepts.

Agreed to all.

I would add these reasons why broadcast television (like most of electronic entertainment except video games) has been stalled since about 2001:

--Salaries: With many television "actors" getting paid $1 million an episode, the already whithered finances of television broadcasters end up paying these salaries just to stay relevant and "alive."

--Short seasons: In the 1960s and 1970s, the television program Daniel Boone produced and broadcast almost 30 episodes a season. Today's television series such as Walking Dead produce and broadcast half the episodes of Daniel Boone.

When cable television (and even web sites) are producing and streaming high-quality broadcasts with notable actors, is it any wonder that their lower production costs and ability to morph quickly into whatever storyline their audiences want have become the money-making avant garde, not mainstream television?

After goodie goodies banned the bugs bunney road runner show, because people thought everything would get more dangerous. Kids would just run into walls, and jump off cliffs, everything got less creative, over sensored (by the way, murder and crime is o.k.?), and the actors turned into a completely showy bore full of bad acting. If anything I think it is lowering peoples common sence. If there is such a scale, or statistic, I don't know.

Alot of kids behave like baby gangster criminals, or wanna be good guys now.

It's a downhill climb. I can't stand it.

Sports either. I would have to perform somekind of escape to fantasy, just to watch it, and keep myself from falling asleep, which I always do.

Remember H.L. Mencken dictum of the American Public? You can see that in what passes for American Television. It has also fulfilled Edward R. Murrow's expectations.

Umm...
Those people are real old journalists right? Meaning "real" journalists. We don't even have those anymore. Now they are all just like story telling robots or something. I can't watch the news either. I just get all freaked out. If I was made to watch it all the time, I would definately have a meltdown.

I will just stick with video games, and movies.

It depends what kind of TV is bad.

Network and syndicated TV is crap, 8 minutes of program, 7 minutes of commercials, 8 minutes again of program and 7 more minutes of commercials.
How can anyone enjoy TV anymore? Plus all the show must be politically correct, they can't show certain things, can't say or use certain words, can't mention certain topics. And when they show movies, everything is cut, censored and edited to fit in a certain time frame.

Regular cable is a little better but still crap, first because they have to much commercials, and even so they can go further with violence and language, like The Walking Dead that shows a lots of violence, blood and gore, they still can't show nudity (even a pair of breast, I mean WTF, it's just the human body) or use certain words like the F-bomb or the N-word or the C-bomb. So they are limits there.

Then we have premium cable, like HBO, Showtime, CineMax, there they can do whatever they want, shows like Games of Thrones or Banshee show it all, violence, nudity, sex, they are allowed to say anything they want, what allows the creators of these shows to be more creative and be edgier. And when they show movies, no censorship.

And today most people are turning over the internet and service like Netflix because they can chose want they want to watch, when they want to and it's cheaper and no censorship.
But I've heard that there is a company in the US that is planning to let people chose the channels they want and will be paying based on what they pick.
So If I was still living in LA I would give up all the crap channels, all the network channels and ask my provider to only have AMC, FX, Scifi, HBO, Showtime, Max and Starz, and screw all the other channels.

BTW, here in France the amount of commercials allowed a decided by law. No more than 2 commercial breaks per show or movie. And it's against the law to cut, censor or edit anything out, because here it's seen has art, and you can mess with art. And TV channels can show anything they want after 10PM, violence, nudity, gore, sex, offensive language and no cuts allowed. Even public TV and network TV can show what they want and they do... Only porn, that can only be shown after 11PM and you need a code that you dial with your remote to watch it. Only problem is show arrive here 10 to 16 months after the US, so a lot of people resort to piracy.
Oh, and I forgot, nudity is not an issue here, and it's common during the day to see breast on TV, almost every commercial for shampoo or perfume or lingerie shows breast.
Oh, and in Italy even the 8 o clock news is presented by half naked women :-p

I need to move to France.

Be careful what you say, because don't think TV only shows cool US stuff, they also have by law to show 40% of French or European stuff, and French movies and French TV shows suck hard, they are awful, pure s**t. So when nothing on TV, just watch something American, English or Japanese on DVD, BR, Netflix or pirate it.

A big issue is the emergence of other mediums.

With cable came "niche marketing" .... channels devoted to a particular genre of entertainment.

Where you basically had 3 major networks catering to EVERYONE and PBS for the more high-brow/limited viewing audience market, now you have over 100 competing channels (if you are willing to pay for basic cable or satellite service).

Star Trek barely lasted 3 seasons on regular TV because it was Sci-Fi, and that's a limited viewing audience. ST:TNG lasted 7 seasons...on a 4th network. Voyager and Enterprise were on a 5th network. Now most any good Sci-Fi is going to be found on a dedicated cable channel.

As a result...free TV caters to the most basic of cultural tastes, and it's more and more a sewage pit. You get some wonders, but most shows are cookie cutters of past success stories in the hope they can get lucky twice. Hell, NBC at one point was doing Dateline every night....like there was really that much news to turn into a TV news magazine?

I dunno. Some of the stuff I saw wasn't bad, but I don't think they have English subtitles on French TV.



ST: TNG was syndicated, not on a network. Yeah, I'm kind of a dork.

You'd think that with more choices, they'd have better content to compete. NBC is a different story. They had Jay Leno on 5 days a week at one point, too. Your point about free tv catering to the lowest base may not be true. The reason why some tv shows are cookie cutter is because people need to watch something that doesn't require lots of thinking. It's why McDonald's sells so many hamburgers. They aren't that great, but the are a quick fix.

What I'm referring to on content is that shows that would benefit most from HBO-like censorship can't because of silly outdated FCC censorship laws. Despite what the Internet and news sources claim, I don't think most people would care about uncensored content on tv. It's the 10% or less that cares about it and they get the most TV time and Internet postings.

too much reality tv.... i wonder who keeps watching this crap like toddlers and tiara's, karadi...krad...those K peeps....honey boo boo...and the countless others that i don't even feel like typing out... to make the tv people be all like..."hey they like this...lets' do more!"

In a different thread, I made the comment that when I was in graduate school studying to be a librarian, there was a great fear in the profession where a handful of companies would own both content and conduit. This is quite true in broadcasting, both radio and television. Let us look at cable tv for the moment.

The largest cable company in the U. S. Is Comcast. Consider the properties owned outright by Comcast:

Comcast Cable
Comcast Internet
NBC and its properties (USA Networks, Golf Channel, MS-NBC, CNBC, NBC Sports channel, SyFi, Comcast Sports Network)
Universal Studios
Autism $peaks

Next, we have Viacom Networks, which own the following networks:

Spike
CMT
Nickelodeon
TV Land
Paramount Studios
CBS (yes, I know they are separate from Viacom. However, I'm including them due to the fact CBS spun off Viacom back in the 1970, due to restrictions put on the networks by the FCC regarding networks syndicating their own programs after first run on network.)

I'm not even going to discuss ABC/Disney, TimeWarner/Turner, Discovery Networks, Hearst/A&E Networks, in order to save space.

Further, over the air Radio And TV suffer the same fate. There is little to no local ownership of Radio and TV stations anymore in this country.

For example, in television, let's look at the Harrisburg/Lancaster/Lebanon/Gettysburg/Chambersburg/Carlisle/York, PA market

Channel. Call Letters. Owner
8. WGAL. Hearst Television
15. WLYH. Nexstar Broadcasting (LMA with Sinclair)
21. WHP. Sinclair
27. WHTM. Media General
33. WITF. WITF, Inc (formerly South Central Educational Broadcasin Council)
43. WPMT. Chicago Tribune Broadcasting
49. WGCB. NRJ TV, LLC

With the exception of WITF, all of the stations above are owned by media conglomerates. There is very little original programming on all of these station, as they take their feeds from the networks.

If you think TV is bad, the ownership situation in this market is even worse. In the same market, Cumulus owns every radio station in York County, save WYCP, which is owned by York College, Clear Channel and Citadel own the remaining radio stations in Dauphin, Lancaster, Adams, Franklin, and Lebanon counties, except for WITF, WRTL, WJAZ, and WIXQ, which are owned by WITF, Inc., Temple University (WRTL and WJAZ) and Millersville University.

Why has broadcasting sunk to such a low state. We can thank the Reagan Administration for that. Reagan's FCC loosened the rules for the number of stations that could be owned by a corporation, as well as loosened the technical and engineering requirements for adding stations to a market, as well as no longer requiring stations to serve in the public interest. Instead of fostering competition, as Reagan and his cronies postulated, they turned a viable service to a community into a wasteland. Unfortunately, the current administration, nor Congress seem interested in turning the situation around.

Any wonder if I want to listen to my favorite music, I use TuneIn on my iPhone and iPad to listen to the BBC Radio 3, RTE Lyric FM, The ABC, 3MBS, 4MBS, and 5MBS?

I actually think network TV has become worse than it was ten years ago, especially in the content department. Its very rare these days, to find a primetime show on any of the "big three" networks that doesn't do something controversial. Mostly, its used as a desperate ratings booster, which makes it even more pointless.

I have very basic cable myself, mostly just local channels with a few others like Disney and TNT thrown in. Most of the shows I watch could be safely rated at PG-13, though a couple do push that boundary every once in a while. Here's my list...

Once Upon A Time (Sundays, 7PM Central, ABC)
Castle (Mondays, 9PM Central, ABC)
The Flash (Tuesdays, 7PM Central, CW)
Agents of SHIELD (Tuesdays, 8PM Central, ABC)
Person of Interest (Tuesdays, 9PM Central, CBS)
Arrow (Wednesdays, 7PM Central, CW)
Blue Bloods (Fridays, 9PM Central, CBS)

I also like the new show "Forever" on ABC, but I usually watch it online because it airs in the same slot as "Person of Interest".

I think network tv has become too dumbed down, but cable is no better. I don't want to see nudity or raunchiness on tv. I will rent a movie if I want to watch garbage. I don't know who cable tv is marketing toward but what I see on cable is nothing but pure stupidity. Intelligence does not fly for cable tv viewers. They seem to want mindless escapism. "Reality tv" is mostly fake, superficial and very, very shallow. Shows that I find interesting and mentally stimulating like "Longmire" and "Parenthood" being cancelled because the demographic does not fall into the age group advertisers are chasing.

Shows like "The Bachelor" "American Idol" "The Voice" "Survivor" all make me cringe, but this is the direction cable is running toward.
"Duck Dynasty" "Dancing with the stars" "Naked and afraid", naked dating, naked this, naked that.

All mindless superficial drivel to me, but that is the target audience, and the age group in that target demographic is reflective of something not flattering about our culture and society.

Ever shrinking number of channel owners.
Formerly dedicated niche channels abandoning audiences and resorting to lower cost reality programming.
Children's channels resorting to near nonstop screaming in cartoons or slowly abandoning cartoons altogether for teen comedies.
The above somehow creating a profit.