Well the networks can do it, so why can’t I? This post is based on one I wrote back in 2006, posted to my MSN/Live Spaces page, and promptly forgot. I just tumbled across it today, and figured it was worth extending, rearranging, and re-releasing. We call this post "Eleven signs that television is going straight to hell…the Director’s Cut." But don’t worry….Han still shoots first.
1. Miami Ink.
Here’s a show about tattoo artists, on the Learning Channel. Hey, look, I’m not saying there is anything wrong with ink when it is tasteful and well done (odds of that happening are 1.0123*(10^23) against…just sayin’) and I am not about to tell you what you can or cannot do with your own body (unless you are my child, in which case…AWW HELL NO!,) but I just feel that it is wrong to see this show on the same channel that I turn to when I want to learn about quantum mechanics, string theory, the migratory patterns of waterfowl, and such. Maybe the FCC set an average IQ that a network’s programming must meet. That might explain Dog the Bounty Hunter on A&E.
2. ECW on SciFi.
Okay, someone please explain to me not how Wrestling an be considered SciFi, or SyFy, or whatever (it is so real!) but rather, how can the same network the brings us Battlestar Galactica air ECW? Raw or Smackdown, sure! But ECW? Come on now, who do you think you’re fooling?
3. SpikeTV.
Sure, they syndicate some pretty good shows, but I feel dirty watching them on that channel.
4. Reality Television.
America’s Top Model fired a dozen writers. A dozen. Somebody want to explain to me how it takes more than a dozen writers for a REALITY SHOW?
5. Seventeen seasons of Jerry Springer Show; one of Firefly.
You do the math.
6. Comcast’s purchase of TechTV.
Words cannot express the darkness of that day. "The Screen Savers" was the best geek show to ever hit television.
7. All the damn icons that all the networks put in the corner of the screen.
If there is one thing I hate worse than flash ads with audio that pop over the page whenever you mouse across a key word, it’s mini-commercials that take up a full quarter of the screen and pop up in the middle of the show. I bet the same jackass who cancelled Firefly came up with that idea too. Just you wait Mr. Nameless Fox Programming Director…one day, I will find you. You and all your cronies. And on that day you will know what it is to be roasted in the depths of the Slor, I can tell you!
8. Blah. Blah blah blah blah blah
Yeah, I get that the advertisers pay for commercial time, and that is what funds programming, and ratings determine which shows get picked up and which get cancelled, but it seems like great shows get killed before they have a chance to bloom, decent shows have to resort to over-sexed tricks and stupid stunts just to stay interesting and relevant and edgy, and all we get to see is blah blah blah blah blah. Recent cases in point…
Killed before their time, for the crime of making people think:
-The Unusuals
-Dollhouse
-Three Rivers
-Eleventh Hour
-Mental
-My Own Worst Enemy
-The Philanthropist
-Bionic Woman
-Moonlight
-New Amsterdam
-The Dresden Files
-Firefly
9. Shorter seasons
Remember when shows lasted almost as long as the school year? They’d premier in the fall, and it felt like with just a little bit off time of for the holidays, and the super bowl, and the occasional re-run or made for TV movie, they’d be with you all the way until Summer vacation. A couple of months go by, and all your favourites were back for another season. Shows that in the 80′s might go for twenty or more episodes a year would be lucky to get twelve episodes these days. Sure, I believe in quality over quantity (Torchwood: Children of Earth) but I also like to watch a good show grow and develop. Most new shows these days aren’t given the time they need to bring a story arc to fulfilment, unless of course we’re talking about American Idol, which comes on four nights a week for two hours straight.
10. More, longer, louder, and worse commercials
Back in the good old days, an hour long show was around 50 minutes of show. You had an opening, a commercial, and then the show broken up into three acts, with commercial breaks at 15, 30, and 45 minutes. These days, you have maybe 38 minutes of show, and more commercials than there are chapters in a James Patterson novel! Does anyone remember going to AdCritic because someone was talking about a commercial that was so clever, you actually wanted to see it? What the hell happened?
And the volume…OH MY DEAR SWEET BABY JEEBUS THE VOLUME! FCC regulations limit the volume level of commercials to the maximum level the audio reaches in show. THAT IS WHY YOU ALWAYS FIND SOMEONE YELLING, OR A GUNSHOT, A JET PLANE, OR A ROCK SONG…WHAT DID YOU SAY???!!! TURN IT DOWN!!!! in a show; so they can crank up the volume during the commercials. They think that gets your attention. Oh it does that for sure, just not the way they’d wish. We time-shift almost everything just so we can fast forward through the commercials. If we’re watching something live, I sit with the remote in hand so I can hit MUTE the moment the commercial break starts. Hey advertisers, it worked for Billy Mays, but you are no Billy Mays. We miss you, Billy.
Speaking of bad commercials, please please purty puh-lease when you are running commercials past your test audience, run them three or four times in a row; run them every… single… stinkin’… break with your test audience. Run them forward, and then in reverse, just to see how they react. Some commercials are okay the first time you see them. Some commercials are so mundane you can air them six times in the same show and nobody minds. Others will inspire a level of rage in the viewing audience unparalleled since the early Trioxin experiments. You do NOT want to be between me and the remote control when the talking pothole commercial comes on. "Hey Geico, stick with the (real) Cavemen and the Gecko. Drop the rest."
11. Springsteen said it best…
Fifty-seven channels and nothing on. Of course today I have something like 1050; still got nuthin’. But when I find out who took away the option to filter out channels you don’t want to see on the TWC guide; well let’s just say I’m gonna get medieval on his ass.
Until that glorious day, enjoy this timeless nugget from the The Boss…still appropriate eighteen years after its release.
Sound off if you’ve got a pair! What commercials do you love to hate?
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