No they don’t. There is an ever increasing amount of gold diggers, and not a lot of gold havers to go around. So a few gold diggers are happy, and many are endlessly searching and wondering why they aren’t getting a proposal or commitment.
TV in the US is so weird. I mean, we’ve got all of that in Europe too (on some channels), but whenever I watch American TV, everything seems to be cranked up to 11. The aggressive of your news shows, the quantity of your advertisements, the weird rules from the middle ages (no swearing or nudity on certain channels), etc.
And the Pharma commercials?! It’s insane, if I want a pill I go to the doctor/pharmacy say I have a headache they will prescribe some shit and I will pick it up, why would I need a commercial for that?
TV shows produced in my country are reaching cringe-levels, especially the TV mag show KMJS. I lost my trust in watching TV. And noontime shows are spewing cringe and usually controversial remarks.
American here. I stopped watching “TV” about 15 years ago, and have streamed just about everything ever since. I’m also exposed to a lot less advertising now and my life is better for it.
Watching television at family/friends house feels like traveling to a foreign country. It’s exactly like you describe. I don’t recognize any of it anymore.
MTV has been all over those "reality" shows and candidate shows since at least the late 90s though.
Hey, I'm Bam Magera and this is Jackass Roomraiders where Xibit builds flat screens into your entire house for no reason after we had a hot girl go through all your embarrassing shit while you waited in a car of some kind outside watching together with your adversaries who go absolutely apeshit about anything that happens, also UV sperm detection light. NEXT
MTV invented the reality format. The first few seasons of The Real World were innovative and novel. Then the execs realized how much cheaper reality was to produce and flooded the market with garbage until it was all we had left.
MTV’s downfall started when they got rid of all the Music freaks in the C suite that liked music and hired TV producers. Then we got Remote Control. We didn’t realize it at the time, but that was the downfall of MTV. Once those TV execs realized they could make non-music content, we got The Real World. It was OVER.
Remote Control was probably the first program not about music (I remember LL Cool J quipping that they didn’t have questions about the radio) but I think it was still in the spirit of the youth culture and edginess of early MTV. But, yeah, it likely marks the time at which the execs decided they had to “innovate” new programming that strayed from the format that made people watch MTV in the first place.
That said, I don’t think they knew the monster they were unleashing when they created The Real World.
Yep. Although it still did music videos for at least a few hours a day until the 2000s. VH1 was a holdout for a longer time. Does that Canadian MuchMusic channel even exist anymore? We got that when I used to have DirecTV. It had a fun early low budget MTV feel to it which I knew was not destined to last.
It was a fun channel. My favorite memory is having the lead singer of Barenaked Ladies come in and play foosball with the VJ. They said he could request any video he wanted, so he requested Mr. T’s Commandments, which is an (I think unintentionally) hilarious video where Mr. T does a Christian rap about honoring your parents while beating people up.
That's absolutely not true. I've learned that I may be messy sometimes, but at least I'm not walking through goat paths of garbage. I've learned that I may be a bit of a fuck up that enjoys recreational drugs, but at least I'm not walking on sunshine. And I've learned that I may be bit overweight, but at least I'm not bed-ridden and disappointing my doctor. I always feel better about myself after watching a TLC show.
I’ve definitely learned how exploitative it is to force people in terrible life situations, many suffering from mental illness and/or some sort of past trauma or are just in a bad spot all around, to broadcast their lives for all to see and gawk at.
Oh you have a severe eating disorder that is extremely dangerous to your health? What a Freaky Eater you are! You also clearly have your Strange Addiction so we can exploit you twice for the same effort! Oh you’re not even living paycheck to paycheck and are dumpster diving behind the grocery store to feed your family? We got an Extreme Cheapskate over here!
Nope, you neglected the worst offender… SciFi, that they renamed to SyFy (and I pronounce “siffy” or “siffylis” now) that used to have good science fiction but decided WWE and ghost hunting was the way to go.
I know, but the rest of the history of the show is kind of bleak. They had two Netflix seasons before Netflix shitcanned them, then crowdfunded a successful (and terrific IMO) 13th season. This year, they had another crowdfunder, but they did it outside of Kickstarter and put minimal effort in, so it failed. I have no idea if the show will continue at this point. There is Rifftrax and The Mads, but they aren’t really the same. I need my puppets at the bottom of the screen!
NOw it’s Disney+ for Star Wars and Paramount+ for Star Trek. I was excited to find the trove of new Star Trek series the Pat for various reasons I didn’t watch in several years
I’m kind of afraid to know the answer about whether I was fooled by marketing …… when CBS tried to kick off their own personal streaming service with the new Star Treks, I refused to play that game. You’re not getting a subscription for every tv network. Now that the service is Paramount+, I’ll pay (for a while) to also get a studio’s worth of new and old movies. Please tell me there’s a real difference, and I wasn’t just fooled by re-marketing the same old shit
It’s so cheap to produce that it doesn’t need as many people watching it to be deemed profitable. And many people watching it probably just let it run in the background because it doesn’t need any close attention. Basically like soaps, but soaps need writers so are more expensive.
Yeah, that’s my brother. Every time I visit, he seems to have some new reality show he watches. Somehow he’s always surprised I’ve never heard of I t and am not interested in it.
It’s always on in the background and no one pays attention unless the ice starts cracking under the truck, or the survivalist misses his airdrop, or some manufactured drama hit the fishing boat or whatever. He’s a pretty active guy, so I’ll bet most of the time these reality shows are going, there’s no one even in the room
A lot of TV has always just been a way to fill the gaps between the adverts as cheaply as possible. Moving from 4 channels to 200 didn’t increase the amount of stuff you could watch, it just spread it all over the place.
It ate itself, streaming is going the same way. Maybe they’ll eventually catch on and have a service that contains every movie and TV show (once they’ve finished in the theatre, and past the Blu-ray/Pay-per-view part of their lifespan where people will pay for it individually), for like £30 a month, and it can be like Spotify and the other music services. A Kaleidescape for poor people. Until then I’ve gone back to mostly yarring it for any new stuff, and using a Jellyfin server.
Nobody wants a dozen services to look through, even if they did have more money than sense.
Unfortunately we’ll probably have to battle contracts again before that happens. As more of us rebel against the insanity by switching what services we subscribe to every couple of months, they’ll have to try to prevent frequent switching. for cable, they always pushed long term contracts and we had no choice. I’m not getting locked into a long term contract unless it’s a serious discount, and even then I realize it’s mostly a trap to get your credit card on auto-renew.
I’m an expat American who has lived outside of the US for 17 years. Last time I went back there was 8 years ago. 2 years ago I got a pen pal from the US who just LOVES talking about these trashy cable shows. I’m also kinda 48 years old. So, I remember when cable became a new thingy. People said cable programming was trash since cable programming came into existence. Sure, the programming wasn’t all realities. MTV had music on it. You know what the adults said about MTV (including my parents?) They said, “All that sex in the music videos. So perverted.” Just imagine the scandal of playing Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” every hour on the hour on MTV in its heyday. I remember telling my mother, “It’s a great song! I like it!” before being shuffled off to Sunday catechism, which I escaped from to smoke cigs in the woods behind the church/convent. I’d ride home from catechism in the car reciting the words to “Like a Prayer” and any other Madonna song that came to mind. Plus I’d recite some Prince at my parents, another nice rebel on the MTV cable tube played constantly back then. Maybe following reality TV is a new form of subversion. Maybe it exposes the meta of celebrity. People are hip to this, especially very young people. Very young people are so aware of the meta everything and know how to use it for subversion.
Their parents or grandparents might, like I’m talking about. I’m middle aged and I don’t have cable. I wouldn’t have cable if I lived back home in the USA. I’m not talking about young people who are old enough and employed enough to live on their own. You totally overlooked the point I’m making (which, ummm, also connects with Netflix having reality shows, too?). Also, my point about cable being considered trash since it was invented went over your head. That’s an undeniable historical fact you can look up. Cable programming has always been considered trash since its inception.
Youtube in has done a remarkably good job carrying the torch of high quality documentaries and educational content beyond the realm of traditional media. Science, art, technology, history. It’s all there, and much of it meets or exceeds the quality of anything the old guard of cable TV channels ever managed to produce.
I’m actually only now realizing that some of the most established channels have been reaching a wide audience with consistent and high quality content for the better part of a decade, and yet I can’t think of any who have successfully broken into more “traditional” media such as television or or even streaming services. That seems exceptionally strange to me. I mean, last month there were headlines about Netflix giving $55 million to an unproven director who proceeded to blow it all on expensive cars instead of filming the show he was hired to make. Who decides to hire that guy over any number of youtube creators who have spent the last ten years cranking out a short video a week along with occasional longer form projects, all with a small crew on a shoestring budget. I can imagine three possible reasons for this. No idea which one(s) could be the real reason, or if there’s something else entirely going on.
Hollywood^1^ is so insular that they don’t even realize these people exist.
Hollywood is so stuck in its ways that they refuse to believe these people could be successful running a larger production.
Offers have been made, but those offers have been so restrictive that any number of youtubers have turned them down despite, one would assume, a large amount of money being on the table if they go along with it.
That last one in particular seems unlikely, but I do recall that the popular Primitive Technology channel went quiet for a year or more before abruptly coming back to life. Rumors swirled that he had been hired to turn the concept into a TV show, but the production company kept trying to change things and he eventually gave up and went back to doing it his way on youtube.
^1^ used here as shorthand for the more corporate and structured entertainment industry at large.
Nickelodeon gave Fred their own TV show+movie and YouTube bankrolled some popular creators to make a few YouTube red originals, that’s about as far as I can think of
I used to love A&E when it was biographies and Lovejoy.
The major TV networks were so embarrassed by being outproduced in quality by these niche cable networks that they raised the level of their programing to match. LOL, no. They bought out all the niche cable TV channels and turned them into trash. Hurray Capitalism.
Edit: and in the streaming era, the same kind of thing happened to Pluto. They had some great, quirky programs. Like the train channel. Checked them out a couple weeks ago and they look completely different post buy out. All the tech and gaming content gone. No train channel. Bunch of channels that just run reruns of one show.
A&E stands for Art & Entertainment. Before it was biographies it was cultural programming, like An Evening at the Improv, Breakfast with the Arts, and Live by Request (concerts). Same with Bravo, with fine arts and film.
Say what you will about the entertainment merits of Real Housewives and Kardashian shows, at least the stars of those shows signed up to have their drama exploited for ratings. The producers of shows like Hoarders and Intervention are morally bankrupt. TLC is basically an entire network devoted to turning people’s mental health and addiction crises into spectacle for cheap entertainment, and it’s absolutely disgusting.
“And now on the Democrat line, we have Bubba from Florida”
“Yea I’m one of them woke liberals and I think all us woke liberals need to get good with Jesus and start worshiping the one true savior, Donald Trump. Also, fuck them illegal immigrants that Sleepy Joe is letting im!!”
I actually do watch C-Span (streaming) from time to time if there’s an important bill up for a vote. But that’s a pretty wonky level of keeping an eye on what the government is doing. I’d still rather have it than not.
Edit: I just checked their line up, as I haven’t been anywhere cable was playing for years. They’re doing one show per day now, it’s an all day marathon of either Ancient Aliens, Pawn Stars, The UnXplained (bigfoot, etc.), American Pickers (literally a reality show about trash) or Mountain Men (seems to be a reality show about some dudes in Alaska).
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking of before I went over and checked their line up. In the wee hours of the morning they have something called “paid documentaries” without any further detail. I’m very curious what that is. Is it an infomercial? Some unholy cross between an infomercial and a documentary? Are they selling imitation Nazi gold?
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