Really? That doesn’t even make any sense.
Well, most businesses would prefer it if you gave them money without them giving you a product or service in return. I think that goes without saying.
But the business of television, by definition, cannot operate without a show to wrap the commercials around. That’s just common sense.
Exactly this, on both points. I agree and thank you.
What talk shows are, more than anything else, is that they’re mindless drivel. The fact that much of that drivel is also promotional is just sort of a bonus to Television Hell and explains why I hardly ever watch TV and my large flat-screen is almost entirely for movies. The other hellish “bonus” to talk shows is that it’s getting to the point that almost half the airtime is commercials.
Two notable exceptions to Talkshow Hell are the Daily Show and Real Time with Bill Maher. Sadly, Jon Stewart still has occasional vapid movie starts promoting their latest “project”, but he has a good proportion of interesting and influential people who have made significant accomplishments in politics or social issues. Even if they’re there to promote a related book, the discussion is usually substantive, interesting, and often enlightening. And I’m a huge fan of Bill Maher, another genuinely substantive talk show – and entirely commercial-free, though even there you get book promotions, but who cares – it’s a minor part of it.
As for Seinfeld, it’s complicated. The man himself I think has become fairly uninteresting in later years, and I really, really hate shows that become wrapped up in their own sense of self-important trendiness – there are some Seinfeld scenes and lines that you just know are being written to be chatter around the water cooler in the office the next day. But one thing is undeniable: the Seinfeld and Larry David duo had real scripting genius that they managed to instill into the rest of the writing team, the cast was just perfect, and the result was television magic, even if it was sometimes uneven. Those who dislike Seinfeld seem willing to admit that they’ve never actually watched it, which IMHO explains a lot.
Well, you’ve been deeply mystified by most of the comments I’ve made on the topic, so no real surprise here. We appear to live in not-very-parallel universes.
Let’s try it this way: do you think advertisers would put one dime into making an ad “entertaining” or flashy or eye-catching, or include one word past “BUY THIS!” if they didn’t have to? (Nope.) All but the core sell message is empty razzle-dazzle intended to get your eyes to hold still long enough to transfer that core message.
And if my grocery store could sell me moldy bread and spoiled milk for the same price, they would. But they can’t. So what’s your point?
Pretend I said this. Because it is the PERFECT response.
And if frogs had wings, they wouldn’t bump their ass a-hoppin’. What’s yours?
I’m not sure what’s so hard about understanding that most of the things people admire, or pretend to admire, or put up with about advertising are things the marketers would just as soon leave out; they’re the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down.
The idea that, say, Wonder Bread makes an ad that costs $6M and entertains the shit out of everyone who sees it because WB wants to be in the entertainment business is kind of mystifying.
To your belief that advertisers make their ads exciting and interesting because… reasons. But also your belief that television executives would just run commercials 24 hours a day if they could.
The only thing you can say about both situations is that advertisers and television execs CAN’T do those things. So why argue that they could?
But they are in the entertainment business - the entertainment BUSINESS. They entertain us, or they don’t get money. That’s how business works.
It’s like you’re saying that a stand-up comic is only making us laugh because he wants to get paid; otherwise he’d just sit on stage and masturbate for his entire set. Well, duh. We know that.
I didn’t say that Seinfeld was a bad show. I’m saying that I could never stand Jerry Seinfeld and thus avoided watching the show. I don’t find him funny. Can I understand why other people found him and his show funny? Absolutely.
I think both of you have a point.
His point: There is an incentive in business to sell as cheap a product as possible for the highest price.
Your point: You can only get away with so much in trying to do that.
Both correct.
I work in the advertising business so I see some thing from the inside. I think a countervailing factor to the profit motive is a desire to produce something truly excellent. For example, I write a lot for the automotive industry, and I do divine from the inside materials I see a desire on the part of the engineers to make something truly excellent.
I think that applies in the world of entertainment as well. In general, show creators really want to produce something great, have people love it, and perhaps even leave a legacy.
But the realities of business impinge on this desire all the time. Case in point. Maker’s Mark was independent and very proud of its quality. It eventually sold out, and a year or two ago, the new owners were going to lower its alcohol content from its current 45%. Fans of the brand screamed, and this wasn’t done.
There wasn’t necessarily a meeting of cigar-chomping capitalists rubbing their hands and saying, “Aw hah hah, let’s cheapen this product!” And there were probably people working on the brand screaming themselves about tradition and quality. But some bean counter crunched some numbers somewhere and thought it would be a good idea.
But such companies are big and dumb and full of incompetent people. In my line of work, I see big Japanese companies doing the dumbest shit you can imagine. You know the old line: Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence.
So it is with TV. On one level, guys like Letterman care about the quality of their shows and try to do a good job. On another level, due to the incentives at work, they end up the stooges of TPTB.