Things that make you go "Hmmm..." (television)

[drwex]

This appeared on the QotD list today:

"I'm not saying that television is vulgar and dumb because the people who compose the Audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests." - David Foster Wallace

That seems, on initial reflection, pretty reasonable. Certainly the Internet has shown how wide a spectrum of interests people have, and how little of it is captured by mass media. The intersection of commonalities is the big dumb things, not the little clever things.

Your thoughts, oh my wise and assembled readers (who watch way more TV than I do)?

Comments

[tigira.livejournal.com]

I have a hard time answering this. We've had TiVo for years, and now I watch only what I really want to watch (since I can watch it WHEN I want). I noticed this when I was in Wausau. I read a great deal because I couldn't be bothered to just have the television on for the sake of just watching it.

I watch Torchwood, and SG-Atlantis. I'll watch BSG when it comes on again, and Dr. Who. I'll watch Firefly reruns, or something similar that TiVo records, if I have the time and inclination. Oh, or the M*A*S*H reruns. Those are classics, IMO.

I don't think I can speak to general tastes, anymore.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I don't watch a lot of television, but if you consider the classic meaning of "vulgar" (as opposed to its contemporary meaning of "crude" or "coarse") it seems like a pretty unremarkable statement.

What I think is more interesting is the question of whether television is qualitatively different from other media (movies, books, magazines) in this regard. People are no more distinctive or unusual in their vulgar and prurient interests when it comes to movies or fiction. But is the industry different?

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

According to the QotD site, that quote was published in a revue in 1993, and so most likely comes from before then.

This is important because there were a whopping total of three (3) networks in the U.S. before the fourth came along, and they were all financially driven toward the lowest common denominator (which, of course, is exactly what Wallace is describing). "Smarter" series were tried, and they "failed", that is, they did not get sufficient ratings numbers as compared with the vulgar offerings.

This changed with cable. This changed when cable was deregulated in the 1980s, and there was a sudden explosion of variety available. Yes, the variety itself also drove toward a low common denominator (LCD), but it drove toward the LCD of a niche. People fled the "Big Three" in droves, which allowed Fox to start up (the fourth network had lower ratings numbers as goals to achieve to show advertizers that it was a "success").

Then ABC ripped the lid off the notion that a "smart" series could not work when it ran "Twin Peaks". This show was a phenomenon, but its ratings were never as good as "The Love Boat" was back in the day. But they didn't have to be. Total viewership was no longer being divided by three; it was now being divided by dozens.

This caused a minor revolution on the networks: "Northern Exposure", "Picket Fences", "thirtysomething", and others all aimed higher, and all got niche audiences of sufficient size to count as a "success" in the new accounting. Better yet, from the advertizers point of view, was that each niche could be seen as a particular target for particular advertizers.

Television is still a mass-market medium, but the nature of that has changed dramatically.

[dpolicar]

(nods) What he said.

[drwex]

I think that's a good historical analysis. Thanks.

[entrope.livejournal.com]

You should take a look at the entire essay that the quote comes from. It's in "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," and it's quite a good read.

[drwex]

Thanks for the pointer - I've added the book to my wishlist.

[bridgetminerva.livejournal.com]

true
why else was Farscape on shorter then Friends or the King of Queens

[drwex]

Because scifi doesn't know its ass from a hole in the ground.

[heinleinfan.livejournal.com]

I think I might have agreed with this a few years ago, now...I have no data. I haven't watched TV regularly in about 7 years now, by which I mean, for over seven years I have lived in apartments or areas of the country where there was no reception on a TV at all, even with rabit ears, and have not had any kind of cable, so my TV is just a DVD player, really. At first it was a financial decision: I couldn't afford even just basic cable. Now...I don't think I'll ever go back to having "tv" in my home.

So I have some idea of shows that are "popular", but even that is skewed by knowing mostly about shows that are popular with just my LJ Friendslist, which is not, I think, "the norm" most of the time. Unless it's an uber-popular show that I can't help but hear about in my daily life, I don't know it exists. And those uber-popular shows that I hear about now seem to be divided about half between vulgar crap and what might be kinda smart entertainment.


I will add that when the situation arises that I watch TV for whatever reason, I'm always pretty disgusted at commercials. I have a love/hate relationship with marketing. I *really* enjoy a smart ad, or a funny one, or a well thought out one, in any medium. But watching TV just makes me feel like marketers think *we are all stupid as shit* and I get, literally, offended by it, and I am constantly amazed that advertising *works* when it can be so obvious and offensive.

[drwex]

There's no actual evidence that advertising works, as any honest ad-man will tell you. At least, not in the direct sense. But yeah, that. (European ads are almost uniformly better than American ads.)