Continuation of 'reality TV' talk

I haven't watched TLC or the Discovery Channel for a long time. But I do recall that they used to have real programming. I could be glued to the TV, and it would actually be productive, because I remember there were shows about the stars, mechanics (like the laws of physics), chemistry, and biology. By contrast, there are pretty awful programs on there last I checked...

I'm not happy about it at all, but I suppose its all just as well that I don't have TV anymore.

 

Interesting topic.

You'd think that with all the alternatives, TV watching would have declined much, but recent statistics such as those found here:

Are Young People Watching Less TV? (Updated – Q3 2013 Data)

indicate that yes, there is a decline year-over-year, but a very slow one, sometimes as little as just 2 minutes a day.

I bring these up because one may assume that advertisers are less interested in paying high prices if viewership is in decline, and if there is less money, there would be less money to pay for high-quality shows...but viewership hasn't declined to any degree significant!

A quote from a speech given to the National Association of Broadcasters on May 9th, 1961 and attributed to Newton N. Minow, former chairman of the FCC, still holds:

"When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better.

But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.

You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, 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'll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it."

 

I find the fact the the History Channel is more interested in 'Storage Wars' and 'Ice Road Truckers' less irritating than when Discovery puts on mockumentaries about mermaids!

That's what really get's me. Personally, I really enjoy shows like Ancient Aliens, because at least those guys are working off some evidence. Not necessarily interpreting it very well and making a LOT of jumps, but at least they come close. Then they put on this crap that is made from the outset to be false, with a single second of warning that it is a fabrication. After one of their more recent outbursts, a show documenting how Megladon had somehow survived until modern times and was being repeatedly spotted, the even offered a poll on their website asking if you believed it.

I can tolerate the switch to more reality based stuff, but the outright lies really bug me...

 

Well I just posted my brief rant about modern "reality TV" in the Duck Dynasty thread....

But to re-iterate, modern American television is garbage, reality TV sucks, I don't watch any of that rubbish. I don't watch much TV, but the only shows I do watch are classic American and British shows from the 1960s and 70s, and the difference in quality is striking to me. Television used to provide an escape from the idiocy of the real world, an escape into well-crafted fantasy worlds that required talented writers to create. If they dealt with real-world issues, they confronted them with maturity and sophistication.

Today we have reality TV that makes stars out of every random idiot out on the street. Idiots like Phil Robertson and Sarah Palin and all the dunces on "Big Brother" (I think that was the show) who kept getting caught saying racist and homophobic things. The writers have been fired and replaced with 'reality' 'stars' put in front of the camera to say whatever idiocy pops into their heads. It's crap.

And yeah, all the supposedly 'educational' channels have sold out to this modern trend too. You're not going to learn anything from The Learning Channel. There's no market for educational material in 2013 America. These networks would fold up if they stuck to documentaries.

 

We are the only ones to blame. If people truly wanted documentaries about the civil war back on tv, they would get them.

I don't necessarily know if I think it's bad that we aren't there anymore. I think that those documentary networks were quite boring. Granted, I was young....still.

I think they messed up, though, when they just forgot about it and went to crap. They should have just used their minds (shock!) and created a better way to create quality programming.

 

I HATE "Finding Bigfoot" on Animal Planet with a passion. Every time they say "squatch," "squatchy," etc., I want to kill a bunny. It's so depressing that it is broadcast on the Animal Planet, which used to carry good programming at one point (I watch this show with my sister sometimes).

I think in general, we have this 24hr news/television cycle and we can only fill so much of it with informative, genuinely enlightening, content and the rest must be filled with the crumbs that fall off the table and are reserved for the dogs (did I just allude to the Bible?).

 

I'm just going to say that the decline of TV documentaries isn't the worst; too many have really dubious documentation, non-sequitur conclusions and gaps in the logic used, and leave out really important stuff because it's boring by popular standards. Especially with history. Documentaries are good for being introduced to a topic, but they're not really good for critical thinking or analysing. No matter how luscious David Attenborough's voice is, you'll only have an illusion of understanding; you need to study the real stuff to get it. Most American, Russian, or British history documentaries are extraordinarily biased, anyway, even worse than nationalistic textbooks, and it's hard (if not impossible) to find what the sources are.

News is always going to be relatively unreliable unless it's a large exposé with a need for copious evidence. The media also tend to refuse to make links between events, and the quality of analysis in journalism is terrible. Politicians are often taken at their word, and media groups sometimes stick to the actions of one party or coalition and never waver in their support, no matter how contradictory it may become. Reading between the lines and understanding the history and the current whole that causes the events is the only way to actually benefit from the news (usually in realising how useless it is), and not many people have the time, resources, or education for that.

However, I won't say that entertainment TV is necessarily declining in quality. There's the pressure of selection to consider. The 70's are remembered for having excellent shows and really insightful stuff, but think of all the rubbish that must have been forgotten. Just as now we have heaps of gems buried in the rubbish heap of mass media, eventually the useless, sensationalist stuff's going to be forgotten and the good material remembered. The only difference is the sheer quantity of it; for every good programme there are a dozen more bad ones, and that's overwhelming when there are dozens or hundreds of channels to choose from.

 

Only good documentary I can remember from History in the past year was The Men Who Built America. I do wish History would devote more air time to documentaries though and this is coming from a Pawn Stars fan who has adopted Chum Lee as his God -



Thank the good Chum that we have the BBC; C4 and Sky Atlantic to pick up the slack.