Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Yeah. For as much as people keep complaining about the stupid and horrible TV shows, you gotta understand they keep making them for one simple reason. People watch them.

 Frazzled wrote:
Hey before COPS, there was professional wrestling.

I blame Homo Sapiens Sapiens myself. Everything was going great until those steenking spear chuckers came along. Spears aren't for chunking. They are for thrusting! Bunch of pansies not brave enough to wrestle down a bison mano o mano...

I used to watch pro wrestling back in the day just for the interviews. For some reason they would crack me up when I was a kid.

 Shadowbrand wrote:
Well. TV's divided into two corners. Theres the brain-numbing gak. The once noble MTV/History Channel and such are prime examples. Then there is the intelligent television that intrigues you and offers a insight into the human condition. Like Breaking Bad, Thrones and Hannibal.

The two are not mutually exclusive. I enjoy all of those shows. I also enjoy watching many of those reality shows on History (though admittedly I draw the line at Duck Dynasty too). Many of the "Wars" shows are rather entertaining (Please, give Barry from Storage Wars and Roy from Shipping Wars their own shows. I could watch Roy get pissed off by customer for hours on end). Watch Ancient Aliens as a comedy show and you won't go far wrong.

Storage Wars is pretty awesome, I've got to admit.

This is why my wife and I cancelled out $75 a month cable, and are now much happier with our $8 a month Hulu

Has TV gone downhill? I wouldn't know. I only watch Mythbusters and the classic TV/Movie channel (yay MASH, loved that show ever since I was a kid).

The only decent reality TV is some of the stuff on Discovery. Everything else is trash.

The History Channel might as well be "The Conspiracy Theory Channel that reruns Hitler shows on the off-season"

I watch Seinfeld reruns, Big Bang Theory, Yukon Men, and Mythbusters with regularity. Everything else is just for when I want to zone out, and yeah its almost exclusively trash.


I also remember when NatGeo actually had interesting documentaries. Anybody remember Eternal Enemies: Lions and Hyenas?

No one tell him about Honey Boo Boo on "The Learning Channel". It'll kill what faith in humanity he has left.

The only "good" TV that isn't strictly entertainment are select shows. Here are my personal favorites:

Modern Marvels
How It's Made
Survivorman
Dirty Jobs
Mythbusters

Those shows all TEACH you things. I could die happily if only those and standup comedy were on TV with no commercials. As it stands, torrents have allowed me that, so I'll take it.

Many other shows are fun to watch, but are edited heavily to suggest drama or tension that isn't really there. I consider these shows entertainment.

Deadliest Catch
Gold Rush
whichever flavor of Logging show you prefer
And the few varieties of gun maker shows that used to exist(American Gun's cancelled itself after the Dark Knight shooting iirc).

And then outside those I like the odd scripted drama or sitcom:
Game of Thrones
Dexter
True Blood(guilty pleasure)
Spartacus
Ray Donovan
Newsroom
House of Lies
Borgias
Big Bang Theory
Family Guy
Sons of Anarchy

and other nerdy things.

There are good shows out there, but for every decent show there is something about a real housewife of Hoboken or a Kardashian, or some kind of pudding dressed as a little girl who drinks red bull all day.

 Desubot wrote:
There is only so much history/science that channels like discovery/nat geo/history/tlc can show.

eventually they run out of material and well this happens.

I don't agree lot's of interesting stuff hasn't been shown yet, but always seems to be about WW2, Egypt, sharks, dinosaurs, the laws of the universe, repeat ad infinitum
How about Indus valley, toltecs, hittites, persians, mesopotamia, ottoman empire, mongols, celts etcetera, etcetera.
How about more shows animals before the cretacious period? Cambrian, Devonian.
There is so many new discoveries in science, but not on the discovery channel it seems.

Don't even start on those biased top 10 millitairy things.

There's never been better tv than we have right now. I mean, you watch a show like Boardwalk Empire and outside of some ambitious miniseries (that mostly failed) nothing like that's ever been attempted before, and certainly not with the talent behind it that Boardwalk Empire has. And yet people aren't talking about it as this amazing show, in fact it barely ever gets a mention, because its one of dozens of shows out there right now with top flight writing and production. Seriously, before the Sopranos I never would have thought TV could get as good as Boardwalk Empire, and now it probably wouldn't be in the first half dozen shows I'd recommend to someone to watch. What's happened in quality drama and comedy in the last decade has been completely brilliant.

Of course, there's also never been worse tv. Despite me thinking it was a awful as tv could ever possibly get, every year it finds a way to make itself more vaccuous.

I don't think that's a coincidence - I think tv suddenly having its very best and its very worst at the same time is related. I think it used to be that good, smart tv and really stupid nonsense sat side by side, using the same formats. We remember Cheers and Seinfeld fondly, but there was also hundreds of other sitcoms made every year that were really terrible.

What's happened, I think, is that tv has formed in to two very distinct business models. It used to be that there were two reasons people were watching your tv show - because they were a fan of that specific show, or because in the words of George Costanza, 'because its on tv' - people had to watch something and if the network was shovelling out episodes of Perfect Strangers then whatever, gotta watch something. And when all tv was sitcoms and drama shows and the like, picking the good stuff that people watched because they were a fan from the crap that people watched just because it was on was pretty hard. Did anybody actually like Wings, because that stupid crap lasted for years so people were definitely watching it... but was that just because they gotta watch something, or did people actually sit down and think 'oh, gotta make sure I catch Wings tonight'.

Now reality tv has become the best way to chase that 'it's on tv audience', because that make hours and hours of that stuff with no more than handycam and a collection of donkey-cave 20-somethings. So there's really no point spending a few hundred thousand to make a junk sitcom, your effort will just be drowned out by the hundreds of cheap reality shows chasing the same viewer. Instead you've basically got go all-in, get the absolute best talent and trusting them to make complex stories with long running arcs, and then charge a premium for that stuff through HBO or some other similar.

Not that that's a complete story. There's still terrible sitcoms out there, Two and a Half Men and that whole Chuck Lorre stable of crap seems to do very well. But when an a-list director like Steven Sodebergh decides to move in to developing stuff for TV because he feels that's where he'll have the scope to tell better stories, well something big is happening.

There is too much air time to fill.

 Easy E wrote:
There is too much air time to fill.

Or too much hindsight . Sebster is right, there are good and bad shows just like there has always been good and bad shows. Can anyone else remember the brilliance of the late 80s? Dukes of hazzard, punky brewster, the cosby show ... it isn't really that good and never was , our perception just changed. Tv will always be stupid , that is what it is there for, helping us relax after work

What's happened to TV you ask? Well, someone has to provide the Circuses for the government 's Bread and these shows fit the bill perfectly.

I was thinking about the closeness between gladiator bouts and reality tv the other day, instead of beating each other with swords contestants are trying to garrotte people emotionally.

Humanity has come so far, maybe next week we shall see 'Americas Best Spearchucker'.


*reason for edit : when i'm tired I spell like an ork.

Bullockist wrote:
I was thinking about the closeness between gladiator bouts and reality tv the other day, instead of beating each other with swords contestants are trying to garrotte people emotionally.

Humanity has come so far, maybe next week we shall see 'Americas Best Spearchucker'.

That would be interesting for multiple reasons, given that 'spearchucker' is an (albeit uncommon) slur here used toward people of African descent.

For "reality tv", I do like Survivor and Amazing Race. Survivor is definitely a guilty pleasure show me.

 sebster wrote:

Now reality tv has become the best way to chase that 'it's on tv audience', because that make hours and hours of that stuff with no more than handycam and a collection of donkey-cave 20-somethings. So there's really no point spending a few hundred thousand to make a junk sitcom, your effort will just be drowned out by the hundreds of cheap reality shows chasing the same viewer. Instead you've basically got go all-in, get the absolute best talent and trusting them to make complex stories with long running arcs, and then charge a premium for that stuff through HBO or some other similar.

Ding ding ding, we have a winner!

Craig Engler and Ted Linhart(SyFy and USA Network's programming directors, respectively) have talked about this multiple times when asked about why SyFy does not go for big series like Farscape or SG-1 anymore. The "reality" TV shows cost them virtually nothing to make and give them an obscenely high ratings boost, which in turn pays for other things(USA's series like Psych, Burn Notice, Suits immediately springs to mind and SyFy has some fires in the oven) that they can lead into with those crummy reality TV shows.

Currently the TV shows I like watching are:

Arrow (USA)
Game of Thrones (USA)
Castle (USA)
Elementary (USA)
Falling Skies (USA)
Modern Family (USA)
Middle (USA)
Big Bang Theory (USA)
Almighty Johnsons (Kiwi)
Continuum (Canada)
Lost Girl (Canada)
Doctor Who (UK)
Strike Back (UK/USA)


One thing that is starting to worry me a little bit, is there's some new TV show out called 'Capture.' - That freaks me out a bit as it seems to be inspired by The Hunger Games....

"Capture" is basically heavily dramatized tag.

It is hilariously bad.

Is that the one with the guys on horseback, or am I thinking of another show?

Probably another show.

"Capture" is on CW and is basically teenagers hunting each other through the wilderness with laser tag vests on.
It's hilariously bad.

I think I watch, domestically speaking:

Daily Show
Colbert Report
Elementary (I thought it would be awful, but turned out to be decent)
Archer
Bob's Burgers
Venture Bros.
Community
Parks and Recreation
Walking Dead
The Newsroom
Game of Thrones
NFL

That is about it, and most of them are in between seasons. Internationally I watch:
Sherlock
Luther

Just like everything else, there will be good things on, as well as bad things. Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, South Park (personal preference): good. All reality tv, especially Jersey Shore, American Idol and all iterations of Bachelor: bad. It's just that we have some really good stuff as well as some stuff that make you want to kill yourself.

 daedalus wrote:

Bullockist wrote:
I was thinking about the closeness between gladiator bouts and reality tv the other day, instead of beating each other with swords contestants are trying to garrotte people emotionally.

Humanity has come so far, maybe next week we shall see 'Americas Best Spearchucker'.

That would be interesting for multiple reasons, given that 'spearchucker' is an (albeit uncommon) slur here used toward people of African descent.

lol , whoops , didn't realise that , I was just trying to alude to one of Frazzled earlier posts.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Just like everything else, there will be good things on, as well as bad things. Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, South Park (personal preference): good. All reality tv, especially Jersey Shore, American Idol and all iterations of Bachelor: bad. It's just that we have some really good stuff as well as some stuff that make you want to kill yourself.

I can't back you on Walking Dead, but the other two got my vote. Don't forget Justified, Bates Motel, Hell on Wheels, Breaking Bad, and a few others.

 Desubot wrote:
There is only so much history/science that channels like discovery/nat geo/history/tlc can show.

eventually they run out of material and well this happens.

Wait, when did TLC ever have anything remotely educational? At least, in actual educational values, not educational as in cautionary tales....

Because they're cheep to make and have higher rateings then serious science shows.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Wait, when did TLC ever have anything remotely educational? At least, in actual educational values, not educational as in cautionary tales....

Before 2001, when it was called 'The Learning Channel' Hell, the origins of the channel were in a not-for-profit educational channel co-founded by NASA.

But stuff happened, parent companies went bust and stuff, and eventually The Learning Channel ended up in the hands of a media congomerate who moved towards shittier and shittier tv, and eventually changed the name to TLC.