19 January 2007

Is the TV Changing or Am I?

When I was a little kid we had four channels on TV, some of them snowy. It seemed like there was ALWAYS something on that I wanted to see, except when the President was addressing the nation, which would be carried by all four channels and be painfully boring to my five-year-old sensibilities. Other than that, TV was GREAT!




Now I have a satellite dish, get hundreds of channels and there is rarely anything I want to see. What's that about? Has television gotten so lousy? Am I not interested because I'm no longer the target demographic and things aren't geared toward entertaining me? Maybe as I've grown up I realize how TV pales next to the real world. Nah, that ain't it.


The preponderance of TV sitcoms and variety shows when I was five have largely vanished. Now we get reality/shock shows and they just don't sing to me. How many of these horrors can you gape at before you walk away feeling like you need a shower?


Thank god for shows like "The Class", "Two and a Half Men" and "The King of Queens."


Yeah, I'm watching "American Idol" and, yes, the judges are getting crueler. I'm not proud of it but there it is. It's better than watching people eat rats and bugs on "Survivor". At least I think it is. I dunno.


Lately we've been turning off the TV more and more. Shocking, I know. We play Scrabble. We play Boggle. We go out with friends. Last night we popped in a DVD of British sitcom "My Family". We've seen it before but it's still preferable to 99.9% of what's on.

In the words of Bruce Springsteen:

We switched 'round and 'round 'til half-past dawn
There was fifty-seven channels and nothin' on
Fifty-seven channels and nothin' on
Fifty-seven channels and nothin' on

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