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Let us compare a funny, intelligent, and thought-provoking show with a reality TV show. It is blindingly obvious which one is better, yet network execs are currently catering to the other, leaving the good ones in the dust. Why are they doing this? What drives them to act with such simple-mindedness?

My theory is that there's actually more at work here than previously thought. To put it as simply as possible, the majority of Americans are of so-so intelligence and do not exercise their intellect as thoroughly as people like us do. Intelligent shows confuse them, despite some being also very funny. They feel dumb when they can't understand what's being shown to them. This makes them feel as if their low intelligence is being subtely mocked and this offends them.

Reality shows, on the other hand, depict people doing extraordinarily silly and stupid things. The content is base, mind-numbingly simple, and sometimes plain laughable. When the American audience watches this, they feel superior and they now feel assured of it by watching people on TV be stupid.

Somewhere along the line, one or a few smart (unbelievable as it seems) network execs recognized the American majority's need to feel smarter, better, and superior compared to their fellows---and the execs took advantage of this by feeding the audience with shows that boost their ego. Watching people more stupid than themselves makes the audience's own failings and stupidity seem not so. It makes them feel good.

I think you get my point.

I think it's a bit simpler. Because many Americans are dumb, they don't get complex plots, and the TV execs use really cheap laughs to cater to them, because it's the only kind of entertainment they can understand.

Makes sense...

Shinova wrote:Let us compare a funny, intelligent, and thought-provoking show with a reality TV show. It is blindingly obvious which one is better, yet network execs are currently catering to the other, leaving the good ones in the dust. Why are they doing this? What drives them to act with such simple-mindedness?

Most people who watch large amounts of TV, the only ones the networks care about, are stupider then people here. No need for several paragraphs to say that. I've meat significantly more then two people who think reality TV is great "because its like real"

Personally when my dimensional shifting time machine is finished its start up sequence I'm stealing Tesla's coil death beam weapon and using it to vaporize the film crew, cast, producers and island involved in survivor.

Stupid people and lots of them. That's all they are and so it's no suprise tevelsion execs cater to them.

Stormbringer wrote:Stupid people and lots of them. That's all they are and so it's no suprise tevelsion execs cater to them.

There's one thing that everyone is overlooking.

Advertising.

Morons watch crap shows.

Adverstisers see high ratings and want to advertise there.

Morons actually buy the stuff on the ads due to their brains being soft and mooshy.

TV execs see huge advertising profits and create new reality TV series.

Advertisers see noticable results and continue advertising on reality TV series.

The rest of us suffer.

Alas, Firefly, Family Guy, we mourn for thee.

Dumb execs making dumb shows with dumb people for a dumb audience....

Makes sense.

It's all Andrew Jackson's fault.

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal about this a few weeks ago. It was about how ALL media seems to be getting dumber lately--music, movies, TV, the works. It's all a product of these megamergers that made entertainment companies just subsidiaries of larger corporations. The wa it goes is, some smart guy in France (I can't recall his name) came up with the bright idea that one of these megacorporations could use its entertainment products to sell its non-entertainment products, and vice versa (an offer for a cell phone plan packaged with a CD, for example). To make this work, though, the entertainment had to have as broad an appeal as possible. "Donnie Darko" is not going to sell many toasters. So everything gets dumbed down and nobody takes any risks.

The problem with this brilliant plan is that "lowest common denominator" programming didn't work the way they thought it would. The lowest common denominator is, indeed, buying this drek, but people who demand more sophisticated entertainment are using digital technology to drop off the mainstream. The music industry is getting pounded the hardest right now, but there's a growing backlash against stupid entertainment in all media. Ironically, the big "cross-advertising" idea relies on digital technology to work, and now consumers are using that same technology to avoid the ads alltogether. THAT'S why the media companies are so afraid of PtP and file swapping--it short circuits their entire grand plan.

I predict this age of stupid will be over in a few years. TimeWarner is seriously considering dumping AOL, the whole music industry is teetering, and when movie fileswapping becomes faster than it is now, the movie industry is going to start feeling some serious pain. They're either going to have to cater to the highbrow market or watch as indie films distributed over the Internet take their business away.

I have a theory: Only idiots are breeding. Smart people aren't breeding because we don't want our children being brought up in such a society. Idiots don't care. Therefore, eventually we will be overrun by idiots.

That's why there is only stupid programming on TV anymore.

Shinova: You win a cookie. Network executives don't give a FUCK about quality shows. They're just looking for ones that'll catch the highest ratings so they can price-gouge advertisers. And because most of America's Nielsen families appear to be mouth-breathing trend-zombies, we get crap like Survivor and Joe Millionaire simply because of the reasons you suggested above.

Our only hope is niche programming, and even that is fast disappearing because cable TV execs stopped caring about their target audience and went for a much larger demographic.

If you are looking for escape, do you REALLY want your brain to be functioning?

Thought is the greatest danger to contentedness.

Couldn't we just take over Nielson and rig the results?

IMHO, entertainment technology and specialized cable channels have done too effective a job of widdling away at the ratings for the major networks. When it comes to TV, you've got solidly written, well-acted dramas like Law & Order and CSI that will draw in people by showing quality television. But you can't sustain a line-up like that, so you have to fall back to hack-job sitcoms to fill it out that turn off anyone but those who can be entertained by, well, crap. But there really is little difference between one type of crap and another (exceptions being some prime time animated shows like Simpsons, King of the Hill, Family Guy, etc. and maybe one or two sitcoms). What attracts these people like rednecks to a smoking bug zapper is novelty. For a while, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire was novel and kind of fun, but it wound up saturating the market and killing itself (but it had started the game show boom like the reality show one we have now). What we're seeing now is a series of fly-by-night shows that go against conventional wisdom by deliberately being short-run bursts of attention-grabbing, hypen-causing examples of why social darwinism wasn't necessarily a bad idea.

Uraniun235 wrote:Couldn't we just take over Nielson and rig the results?

The Ratings Game, starring Danny DeVito, was about precisely that.

Kelly Antilles wrote:I have a theory: Only idiots are breeding. Smart people aren't breeding because we don't want our children being brought up in such a society. Idiots don't care. Therefore, eventually we will be overrun by idiots.

That's why there is only stupid programming on TV anymore.

Scary...

Damn it, I'm going to find an intelligent wife, and we're going to make sure that there are intelligent people still in the world 100 years later!

I knew the world of TV was going straight to hell when Fox cancelled 'Profit'. For those of you who don't remember, it was the show about the guy who was a freakin genius but lived in a box. It was probably the coolest show ever, and it only lasted 4 episodes. Booooo!

Kelly Antilles wrote:I have a theory: Only idiots are breeding. Smart people aren't breeding because we don't want our children being brought up in such a society. Idiots don't care. Therefore, eventually we will be overrun by idiots.

That's why there is only stupid programming on TV anymore.

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The problem really isn't that the smart people aren't breeding, the problem is that it's the stupid people that manage to control everything. The excessive amounts of morons only makes it worse. If 99% of America was idiots, and the other 1% controlled everything, then we wouldn't have crap like "Married By America" on TV (Although all the morons would be demanding shows like that).

Kelly Antilles wrote:I have a theory: Only idiots are breeding. Smart people aren't breeding because we don't want our children being brought up in such a society. Idiots don't care. Therefore, eventually we will be overrun by idiots.

That's why there is only stupid programming on TV anymore.

Not really that. Hicks just breed faster. Even the dumber Rednecks breed faster then the average ones.

Sadly, the majority of the American (and world, for that matter) populace isn't incredibly intelligent. Not really dumb, but not really smart. Many people in the 16-26 year old age group fits into this. Short attention span, not using applying what intelligence they do have, and that is what the 'reality tv' targets. Short attention span (can't watch something >1 hour), and not having to use alot of their intelligence (how smart do you have to be to watch some idiot eat a cow penis or do stupid antics on an island?). The somewhat disgusting and shallow comedic factor involved in this is something that most people can get without having to think, completely visual, no thinking involved.

And, sadly, people watch this crap. They don't want to use their head by watching something semi-intelligent. Instead of turning on the History Channel or Discovery Channel, or watching a movie that requires a semblance of a thought process, they turn on MTV to watch some music video (which, might I add, is the poorest excuse for film making on some of the the poorest excuses for music) or turn on NBC to watch Fear Factor.

The broadcast networks don't give a rats hind end about the crap that they broadcast for the rest of the universe to see, as long as they can get a dime or two off the person who actually will sit down to watch this.

Well of course they're not "incredibly" intelligent... if the majority were, it'd hardly be incredible, now would it?

No, the thing is that execs aren't even necessarily going for top ratings; they want ratings in the audience block that the advertisers want. The advertisers would probably rather see a million people who are stupid enough to watch infomercials, as opposed to a mixed bag of two million viewers.

So by deliberately targeting the stupid, they're also targeting the people who will be more influenced by commercials. And as long as the advertisers are getting the results they want, the money will keep rolling in and the quality will keep going down.

If 99% of America was idiots, and the other 1% controlled everything, then we wouldn't have crap like "Married By America" on TV (Although all the morons would be demanding shows like that).

That 1% would be idiots themselves not to at least partially cater to the stupid. Think about it; produce shit shows like that on a VHS-only basis, sell them for cheap and you could probably bathe in caviar (yuck) with the money.

I don't think everyone in the media is stupid; on the contrary, there are probably some smart people in there. Thing is, they're smart enough to know that they can exploit the stupid people to get themselves filthy rich.