Just how bad is US TV?

Cafe Society
1

Here in the UK we moan about the quality of TV we get “these days”. Usually about the number of make-over programs or “I’m a celebrity - put spiders in my pants” shows or (my bitch about the BBC) the number of repeats*****. However I guess that compared to US programming we are spoiled. A couple of specific questions for starters:

Just how much advertising is there during (say) a one hour show and how is it timed? (when I watch CSI tonight even with ad’ breaks it runs to about 55 minutes).

How much of the programming is new and how much is re-runs of Friends?

Anyone experienced UK and US TV (or Australian, French. . .) and care to give us a comparison?
*****Where do they get the cheek to keep showing Some Mothers do 'ave 'em and the Good Life?

2

As far as ads go, the average 30 minute show (almost all stations do 30 minute blacks) has about 8 minutes of commercials. duble this for an hour block. Sometimes, producers might opt to do less or more, but that is the average. As far as when…well, in a 30 minute show, there are usually three breaks. One either right after the opening credits or a few minutes into the show, one about halfway, and then one towards the end.

3

The amount of advertising varies. For example, on the DVDs of the The Simpsons that I have, an episode will run from 22-25 minutes. Which leaves the other 5-8 minutes for ads when it’s run in syndication. Though there are some parts which get cut out of episodes (and were pointed out in the commentaries), or are sped up so the channel syndicating the show can pack in one more commercial. It really depends on the channel too. Cartoon Network usually runs one long segment of commercials in the middle of Family Guy rather than two or three separate breaks.

However, advertising is slowly creeping its way into the actual programs themselves. Most channels have gotten into the annoying habit of running these stupid pop-ups in the corner/entire lower half of the screen promoting some upcoming program that was just advertised during the commercial break. (TBS is an especially obnoxious offender.) I’m not sure if this is an attempt to combat those with TiVo or what, but it’s irritating, but it’s only going to get worse.

As far as re-runs, I don’t know what it’s like over there, but we have a ton of cable channels here. Some only have re-runs (Nick at Night or whatever the network is called), which is OK, since it usually means something good will be on TV because a re-run of Cheers or The Cosby Show can be found. The networks do seem to churn out a lot of reality garbage, pretty much to the point that I rarely watch network TV in primetime. (I’m in the coveted demographic of 18-35 males that plays video games rather than put up with the nonsense and lack of creative programming on TV currently.) Something the networks were doing this year was re-running programs from the week on the weekend (The Apprentice would run on Tuesday ? and then again on Saturday?), but I’m not sure if they’re still doing this. I’ve noticed that NBC is re-running its programs on its cable channel, CNBC.

4

Repeats of older shows are on a lot, but not during prime time (8-11pm Eastern time zone) on the big 4 networks.

One cable channel, TNT, seems to show nothing but Law & Order reruns.

First run prime time shows can go through periods where they show repeats several weeks in a row, in the middle of a regular season (most series in the U.S. do about 24 episodes per season). The regular season starts about the beginning of October, and ends in May, and those 24 episodes have to stretch out, so a lot of repeats and pre-empting for other programming is necessary. It can be quite frustrating when, for instance, Lost has just left you hanging, and you know that you won’t get a new episode for a month.

Everybody here complains about the stupid reality shows, too, but somehow they keep making more (it’s not as bad as it was a couple of years ago, though).

5

On the average in the US:

A 30 minute block of programming includes 8 minutes of commercials broken into 3 blocks. Each commercial block is, in turn, broken into several 30 second segments.

The current trend is product placement of “commercials”: Instead of having a Ford commercial you’ll see nothing but Ford vehicles in a show. Script writers will even draw attention to the product in the dialog: “Follow that F150” instead of “Follow that pickup”. Whenver you hear a progam is going to be “shown commercial free, sponsored by _____” you can almost be assured characters will exchange witty banter about Coke/iPod/Hilfiger/etc.

Nothing prevents double-dipping of advertisers though, as many shows have both product placements and traditional commercials. I suspect this will continue until the price for writing scripts to suit advertisers generates more income than the commercial would. This is especially obvious with the popularity of DVD season sets. You don’t get the commercials that were originally broadcast but if episode 2 of season 3 revolves around the ditzy blonde looking for the perfect fragrance there’ll be plenty of references to Loreal, Estee Lauder, etc., the episode will take place in Macy’s, and your attention will be drawn to the fact.

As for what they show when they’re not pushing product? Pretty much whatever is hot right now. It’s currently RealiTV, before Survivor it was the C-grade celebrity talk show. Then you get numerous Law & Order spinoffs in simultaneous production, repeats of bygone fan series (Star Trek and it’s decendants), basically anything that can be cranked out with minimal expense. Why pay six figures in star salaries for each episode of Friends when you can have six nobodies eating sheep brains and drinking puree pig rectums, only one of whom gets US$50K at the end?

6

Cliche characters and situations are much more annoying to me than commercial breaks.

I watched a great show last night on PBS. An apparantly new episode of Victory At Sea highlighting the last 6 months of the PTO and possible future consequences of actions not taken and including interviews of Average Joes involved. Really good show.

Trouble with USA TV is that most of it has to make money, one way or another. So, cutting edge shows don’t get much of a chance because of fears of low viewership which translates into low ad revenues. Even the PBS has to run donation campaigns on a regular basis. Again, it’s not so much that I’m ranting about the commercials, but it seems that having to be commercially successful from the get go means that the lowest common denominator is what is usually pandered to. End result? Cliche Cookie Cutter TV.

7

I truly loathe “reality” shows, and refuse to watch any of them.
Primetime drama on TV has, I think, gotten better overall. You don’t have the glories of 12950s TV drama like the oft-cited “Playhouse 90”, but on the otherv hand “Law and Order” beats out “Dragnet”, in my book.
Most Tv, like everything else, was just plain awful, following Sturgeon’s Law the “90% of everything is crap”.
There are very few TV shows that I feel compelled to watch, even on cable.
On syndicated TV and minor cable channels, the problem is commercials. They wedge in an appalling number of them. We were watching a movie last night that was ruined by the sheer number of commercial breaks. And that special on Pompeii, even when brand new, was wall-to-wall commercials.

Bottom line – there have been some good dramas, comedies, etc. on American TV, but it’s buried in a vast sea of mediocrity. Sometimes even the mediocre rises to the surface, but most of the time TV really is a “vast wasteland”
I can’t really compare it to British TV (or anyone else’s, for that matter), because I haven’t seen enough of it. From what I have seen on overseas visits, other people’s TV is still mediocre, but in different ways. One thing that does surprise me is how many interesting shows they have that we’ve never heard of in the states, because American TV stations refuse to import shows. We saw some very intriguing shows when we visited Ireland that we’d not heard of before, or since. Why american broadcasters refuse to even consider programming from other countries (aside from the odd British series or Canadian offering) I do not understand. Way back in the 1960s one American network ran, for one night in the summer “An Evening of French TV”. I loved it, and would love to see more of it. This media insularity (which isn’t the fault of the American public, which is never given even a chance to see this stuff) contributes to what many see as the isolation and ignorance of American society.

8

Bad enough that I’m seriously considering cancelling my cable and using my TV only for PS2 and Netflix.

9

I suppose you could start with the standard rule that the default mode for TV programming in the U.S. is reruns. Some channels show no original programming at all. Starting from that bottom point, you can work upward.

Comedy Central (a “basic cable” channel), usually shows some original programming from 9 p.m. to midnight, at least the half hour of “The Daily Show.”

H.B.O. (a “premium” pay channel), usually shows original programming on Sundays from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. But their original shows are ordered in limited runs, so maybe there will be non-original programming about half the time.

Other specialty channels run new programming when they have it and reruns when they don’t. Often it’s hard to tell when you’re watching a “new” show. It hardly seems to matter whether a particular episode of your favourite cooking show is new or not.

Oh, I suppose “Emeril Live” is always new (daily at 8 p.m.), but, I mean, what a waste.

I don’t know if they still do it, but for some time, the T.L.C. channel was showing two new hours of “Trading Spaces” every damn Saturday of the year, so that was a reliable spot for non-rerun programming.

The programming for broadcast channels (“real TV” before cable or satellite) are split between the local stations (who own the frequencies) and their affiliated networks. For many local stations, their only original program is news, which they do, say, three or four times a day in various formats. The 7-8 p.m. block is usually given to reruns or syndicated game shows/Hollywood gossip shows. The block between 8-11 p.m. is usually given to the networks and they use those slots for original programs, say 25-30 weeks out of the year, filling the rest with reruns. The late night slots are usually given to shows that have no shelf life, so they are not usually reruns. The rest of the daily block can be filled with reruns, original syndicated programming (usually chat shows or “People’s Court”-type stuff or game shows), or network programming (soaps).

If I’d hazard a guess, I’d say that at any one time maybe 90 percent or more of what’s on TV has been shown before.

10

That’s exactly what we did, minus the PS2 and Netflix (we rely on a local DVD rental place). While we occasionally miss being able to veg out in front of the TV, it’s very occasional.

Daniel

11

In addition to the commercial time, there is often additional time for promotional announcements, a news headline, etc. This can add another minute of non-program time per half hour.

There is a difference between what we call “broadcast television” (I believe it’s called terrestrial in the U.K.) and cable TV. The broadcast networks usally have different programs throughout their schedule. By contrast, a cable network may run its 8-11 p.m. programming (“prime time” in the eastern U.S.) again from 11p.m.-1 a.m. (prime time in the western U.S.) and sometimes even again during the daytime. The tolerance for rerunning programs is much different for a broadcast network than for a cable network.

12

Although there’s logic to this in that you get more from your broadcast dollar by rerunning things, I don’t think that, broadly speaking, it’s true, especially compared to TV in the past. There’s a larger proportion of new material to old on most stations, except for those devoted to reruns (“TV Land”) and local stations with really low budgets. Even stations like Nickelodeon, which run the same cartoons over and over and over and over and over and over (we have a 7-year old. Can you tell?) and over and over and over will still keep adding new leavening to the mix, and “pull” the really old shows (“Arrgh! Real Monsters!” only runs on Nicktoons, not on Nickelodeon)

13

same here, most of the shows i watch(ed) end up cancelled anyway

MST3K
Farscape
Futurama
Family Guy (but it’s coming back, yaay!)

i loathe reality tv and refuse to watch it, however i’m started to get hooked on the last few eps of 24 i’ve seen, seems to be a rare show on TV, a well written show that’s got good dramatic tension and isn’t a reality show…

i unfortunately caught a glimpse of that stupid “nanny 911” show that preceeded 24, and i had to stop myself for reaching for my .357 and dry-firing it at the screen, that show would be my personification of hell…

i hate reality shows, i hate screaming brats, and this show had them together <shudder>, it took me only 4.2 nanoseconds before i was reaching for the remote to;

A; MUTE the audio
B; find something…ANYTHING to change the channel to

people actually watch this crap?!?

so, right now, the only shows i find worth watching are;

Family Guy
The Simpsons
Battlestar Galactica
24

so needless to say, the TV isn’t on much at all…

14

The first show I really remember doing any of this was Alias. Premiere ep was sponsored by some cell phone company, and cell phones had a pivotal moment in the ep. And “follow the F-150” is directly from last season.

15

I did this in January (except for the PS2). With the exceptions of Turner Classic Movies and the Weather Channel, I don’t miss it.

16

Seinfeld did it, but they were much more subtle about it. The whole “I’m sorry we can’t take this book back, it was read in the bathroom.” episode was product placement for Brentano’s, the same with the Kenny Roger’s Broaster’s episode where the sign was right outside Kramer’s bedroom window. There’s tons of people in Hollywood who’s job it is, is to read scripts and look for product placement opportunities.

Of course, it predates Seinfeld, since if you watch TV shows from the 60s and 70s, in the credits you’ll often see, “Vehicles provided by” and the name of some car company. If you watch those shows, quite often you can pick out the villian quickly since he or she will be driving a car built by some car company other than the one which sponsored the show.

17

I hardly ever watch TV anymore. (And yes, I’m in that demographic of jaded 18-35 males that was mentioned above.) The one show that I habitually watch is Stargate SG-1 on the Sci-Fi Channel, which I watch mainly because it’s on while I’m eating dinner. I kinda want to see American Idol, just to see if the contestants really are as godawful as people say they are, but I’ve never managed to be watching TV when it was one.

Basically, American TV these days consists of degrading reality shows, nine thousand incarnations of Law & Order, and reruns of sitcoms.

18

My understanding is that Seinfeld never accepted money for placement.

19

Well somebody sure as hell did, because I worked at Waldenbooks (which owns Brentanos) and used to read Publisher’s Weekly while I was there and both Publisher’s Weekly and Waldenbook’s said that they paid money for the product placement. (I forget the exact total, but it was a couple hundred thou, if IIRC.)

20

By the way, the way Seinfeld used brand names, it was hardly ever subtle. If they were taking product placement money, it was pretty in-your-face – Snapple, J. Peterman, the New York Yankees, the Mets, the Knicks, Mayors Dinkins and Giuliani, Pez, the Space Pen, Junior Mints, Saab, Coney Island, Calvin Klein, Entenmann’s, Drake’s coffee cake, “Entertainment Tonight.”

There are a lot of references that also might be completely made up for all I know – Dinky Donuts, Hennigan’s (whiskey), Schnitzer’s (bakery), Mendy’s (restaurant).

I think the point is that the writers used real brand names or made up names as deemed appropriate.