In his last column Jeff Somers, the weird guy who runs this web site and who got me into this web column thing, made a funny reference to wall-sized televisions that never shut off (More Shit I Gotta Do #2) when Big Brother or whomever finally take over. That got me thinking about television, and so I decided to write a column about TV - specifically, since this column is supposed to be about modern-day Suck, about how much more TV sucks than it used to.
    Now, this isn't going to be a rant about how television sucks in general, or about how TV rots your brain and how only morons watch it. I don't believe any of that, actually. I love television, and I'm sure most of you do too. I know there are people who don't watch TV, or who claim not to, and I believe they are either lying or pretentious to a fault. Not only is there entertaining and well-done programming on television, to not watch it in this day and age condemns you to a cultural backwater. Don't you want to be able to communicate with your fellow human beings? I guess if you're a pod-person or something, it doesn't matter, but we humans sometimes like to have something to talk about, and television can be a remotely shared experience that bonds us together.
    No, what I'm going to discuss here is the fact that TV ain't what it used to be. Sure, in the past we had horrible shows like Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, or Gilligan's Island, and certainly prior to Cable TV we had a closed market wherein three major companies dominated the airwaves, resulting in something less than ambitious production values or creative chances. Maybe I'm insufficiently objective seeing as I really don't know what TV was like prior to, oh, 1980 or so, but it sure seems to me that something's gone wrong in the modern age.

    Diminishing choices. Am I crazy, or wasn't the whole idea of having 100 channels (or 500 if you've got some sort of dish setup) that there'd always be something to watch? Wasn't the goal supposed to be a paradise of content where every program or movie ever made would be available somewhere at all times? Well, from what I can see, the growth in channels has only had two real impacts: the polarization of content and an increase in repeats. First of all, since every subject gets its own channel (Comedy Central, the Cartoon Channel, Sci Fi, etc) other channels see less and less reason to delve into that subject. Specialization means that more and more programming is niche programming, leaving viewers to hunt around for interesting content. Strangely enough, this kind of minute market-managing is not resulting in more content - oh, sure, when you have 100 more channels you tend to get more content simply because theoretically you have 100 times as much time to fill. But since most niche channels have small markets due to their niche status, they usually fill a large amount of their screen time with repeats: series and movies purchased from other sources. Meaning that the Sci Fi channel, instead of providing fresh, amazing new science fiction, reruns Battlestar Galactica four nights a week.
    Of course, if you're a big fan of Battlestar Galactica that maybe isn't such a bad thing. The other repercussion of this kind of niche-television, however, seems to be a reduction in the number of episodes produced for a series. Niche markets mean that while the money is still out there, it takes more work to dig it out of us. All the networks are trying to reduce their costs and maximize their profits. Since their advertising rates are largely determined during the "sweeps" periods in the Fall and Spring, the networks are determined to maximize their ratings during those periods. They've reduced the standard order for a prime time series to about 22 episodes a year, and they cluster at least 10 of those episodes during key ratings periods: the sweeps months, and special events like the Superbowl. The rest of the schedule is filled with reruns, which they don't even mark as such any more, trying to sucker us all into watching episodes we've seen before.
    Diminishing quality. While there have been terrible shows on TV ever since its commercialization, things are getting worse, and the reason is economics. The drying up of advertising dollars that niche-marketing and extra channel choices causes means that not only are TV networks trying to reduce the number of shows they pay to produce for their schedules, they're also trying to reduce the budgets of those shows. An easy way to do this is the reality show. Reality-based shows like COPS or The Real World used to be an interesting and different type of show. Today the networks across the cable dial have realized what they really are is cheap programming. Because reality shows rarely use sets, professional actors, or special effects of any kind, their cost is very low. But they are new programming, and can be marketed as such, and thus have more value than repeated episodes or even first-run movies. The combination of cheapness and potential audience makes them very attractive, which is why every possible idea is being thrown at us these days. Everything from the mildly interesting Survivor to the horrifying Temptation Island goes into the blender, and we the audience taste-test the results.
    This means, however, that the more success networks have with reality-based shows, the less they will be inclined to pay for a pricey original drama or comedy. When cable movie channels began to draw away audiences from the networks, budgets for network shows increased to make them more competitive. A show like The X-Files, for example, with its budget of $1 million per episode, would have been done much more cheaply (and badly) 20 years ago. If the network can get similar ratings for a cheaper reality-based show, why would it bother spending that kind of money on something like Friends, whose cast alone costs them more than a million dollars per episode?

    This, of course, is merely my opinion, and certainly this is just a moment in time. Maybe ten years from now we'll all be talking about the Golden Age that television has entered into. Maybe the Internet and the TV will have truly combined and you'll be able to order up any show or movie you wish whenever you wish. Who knows? All I know is, right now, TV by and large sucks. And it is my job, thanks to Mr. Somers, to report on it. As always, if you would like to send me feedback, Mr. Somers has generously set up an email for that purpose: timtheangryclown@innerswine.com. Until next time, remember that everything sucks.