I’m old now and what apparently appeals to the younger crowd I don’t like. I don’t like any of the “hit” shows except a few like The Amazing Race; and I had even decided to stop looking at that because the camera was whizzing around so fast you missed the interactions between the players. It’s slowed down a little this season, so okay. I like Lisa Williams and I even watched and got mad at the Bachelor because he was such an ignorant smuck. Even Judge Judy, though is losing her rapacious appeal. I have a DVR so I can record programs and when in the mood watch them, but I have to say, TV, after all these years is moving farther and farther down my list of ways to spend my time. I’m puting this out there because although I surf on my computer a lot and am pretty good at fixing it when things go wrong, I don’t spend time on Youtube, etc. Wrong generation. And I read today that with the writer’s strike it will push people to the computer for entertainment instead of TV. Do you think this is true? excluding gaming of course. Has America’s fascination with TV begun to ebb? Staring at a big box watching sitcoms maybe losing it’s luster? And these young no-talent kids becoming millionaires and celebs and adversely influencing young people with their drugging and drinking and partying? Are people turning to the computer. Now my generation won’t because computers came late in our lives and aren’t part of our psyches. Or is there something else out there for us, like real life with real live people? Just an aside, I noticed that younger people say they “know” someone and they have never met them except on the internet. A fat guy with his butt crack hanging out and they are in love because he can be anyone he wants online. My grandaughter even referred to one of these losers as her “boyfriend”. So, any ideas what’s next? God, I hope it inovlves real people.
I’m 35, and am fairly with it when it comes to current pop-culture and the culture of my generation, dubbed Gen-X.
No one knows where all this is going. Everything is evolving organically, albeit evolving very fast. The computer has been on the rise since [arguably] the early 80s, as far as solid entertainment, but the internet has made it seem like a community on top of that. It allows connectivity, on a global basis, like nothing else. It can be a two-way feed, where as TV is all incoming: one way.
So, it really depends on your brand of entertainment. I find message boards, Online Games and and the sheer breadth of knowledge that can be randomly accessed (aka, surfing) the best part of the internet. But for solid storytelling and pure entertainment on a consistent basis and of a certain expected standard of quality, still the TV has it beat.
I’m sorry you feel there’s nothing on the TV anymore that grabs your interest (although, not surprising). There are about 10 hours a week of programming I make a point to watch. All other times, I enjoy books, movies, board games, cards, and a healthy social and family life and a career I love (which happens to be in entertainment).
To end my argument, books alone have been around longer than anything but the spoken word, and those haven’t gone anywhere. Nor do I see them going away anytime soon. They might change form, one way or another, but I wouldn’t worry about TV. Maybe dig a little deeper to find some shows you enjoy, otherwise, hang in there… I’m sure you’ll find something that will appeal to you.
And I agree, today’s generation has a lot more to look out for as far as using the internet as a social forum. Deceit lurks in every corner, but eventually, that’s only going to go so far. People sooner or later need intimacy that chatrooms or video conferencing can’t provide. It only delays the inevitable: coming face to face. (leaving perverts and predators aside)
Baby boomer?
That’s how the generations above you felt when they were bewildered by the things your generation was into, and now, finally, things are starting to be focussed a lot more on the post-boomer generations. You mention fast scene-changes: yes, I find it annoying too (and it’s one of the reasons I prefer British TV) but I think it’s a fairly natural consequence of the shows being intended for people aged 18-24: they are faster mentally, and have been raised on computer games and music videos, which feature such fast, ‘jumpy’ video.
The Boomers have been pandered to for so long (and still are - look how ads for assisted living and prescription drugs dominate the airwaves) it’s bound to be a bit of a shock as the money, and therefore advertising attention, moves to the next generation.
30 y.o. student
My mom had her TV on all day long. When she went to bed, she watched TV in her bedroom.
I have the computer on all day long.
With my mom’s generation, I think the attraction of TV was the (relative) newness. She started with a small black and white, limited programming, test pattern after 10 p.m. The comes color TV, more channels, cable and satellite, premium channels, then VCRs and DVDs. She never had TiVo but she would have loved it.
TV was always changing and so it held her interest – movies, CNN during the first Gulf War, then Court TV, soap operas, game shows, reality shows, sports, talk shows – all of it. There was always something new, something to surprise her.
If you grew up with all that, you’re going to be bored. There’s nothing we haven’t seen.
Maybe you should stop watching reality TV if you’re looking for good stuff to watch? Personally, I’m more into movies or Discovery/History Channel stuff. There’s only a couple of shows I watch regularly - South Park, 24, The Office. Battlestar Galactica, etc.
The internet is a double-edged sword. It can be used as another method of communication and socialization that can bring the world (both good and bad) to you or it can be used to isolate oneself from the rest of the world.
I’m the same age as **cmyk ** (35) so I didn’t have the Internet until I graduated college. We had email in college but no one really used it because you had to be a Comp Sci major to figure it out. I had my first cell phone at 23, first job with individual MS Outlook email at 25, high speed internet at 26, first Instant Messenger account at 28 and first MySpace and Facebook page at 34. Kids these days have access to any of these (financial situation not withstanding) basically as soon as they can read and write.
Having just come back from my parents house in the suburbs, I am struck by how isolated everything is. Each house is separated by trees or a hedge on each side and at least 100 yards of woods in back before you hit the next street. It’s like three miles to the main part of town or the town park and about a 20-30 minute drive the nearest mall or movie theater. Growing up there in the 80s, your choices for communication were either the telephone or physically go over to someones house. If you didn’t have a couple of friends who lived in walking/biking distance you were kind of screwed until you could drive (or you sat around watching TV).
So ultimately my question with the internet is does it help suburban kids keep in touch with each other within their isolated subdivisions or do they just disappear into their own individual virtual worlds, indulging their fantasies with no real human interaction?
You must not play many games as few, if any, employ the “jump cuts” that many movies and TV shows favor nowadays. For TV and movies, the jump cut is a way to show something without showing it, particularly a stunt or action sequence that would cost a lot of money to do “for real” or as a smoother bit of CGI.
Video games do not have this problem as every movement on screen costs the same amount. So while the Transformers movie jump cutted all over the place and the actual flow of the fight was hard to watch, the Transformers video game follows that same fight from beginning to end with no jumping (unless the player presses the jump button 
)
Depends on how you define “TV.” More people than ever are watching their television sets, but fewer than ever are watching the networks. Broadcast television is on its way out, because it’s being supplanted by superior ways of getting content out to the audience. Program formats determined by corporate dictate, commercial breaks, success determined by the viewing habits of a handful of Nielsen families… who needs that shit? Stream it all over the internet, let people pick (and pay for) what they want, when they want it, and clean up with the DVD sales. Who needs the middleman in the form of the television corporation any more?
Nobody in the Television Industry wants to take a chance, or put out for quality.
I basically gave up on the networks during the 80’s.
The switchover to digital may prove to be a watershed moment. Folks may get so POed about shelling out several hundred extra bucks, just to watch the same 3rd rate shows they did before, that the number of TV viewers may drop sharply.
Sorry, but you’re missing a crucial distinction here. The oldest boomers just turned 60. Those ads for assisted living are for the previous generation.
This isn’t trivial. While the boomers do carry weight - as they obviously should since they are the most numerous portion of the population - they are not the ones that are the center of television’s attention. This has been true since forever, well before you were born.
Television was very late coming to terms with the boomer generation. A television program that was aimed at people in that age bracket was almost nonexistent until about the 1970s. Even the classic tv shows that revolutionized television in the 1970s were made by and aimed at an older demographic. The same is true for movies. The teen comedies, slasher movies, and dumbfests that dominate the box office today did not exist for the boomers. (The beach movies of the 60s were, again, for an older crowd.)
That changed. That changed a very long time ago, in actuality. Advertisers learned to love younger viewers a couple of decades ago, when Generation X came along. It’s been true for a long time that most television shows are developed to try to get them to watch. Older skewing shows are really older skewing. They have large audiences over boomer age. News shows (and newspapers) are even more so. (Heck, Bill O’Reilly’s audience averages 70.) It’s nearly impossible to find a television show aimed at adults, and far worse to attempt a trip to the movies.
Boomers should have had a long run dominating media. But because advertisers were first slow to get on board, and then later eager to run after trophy watchers, it never happened. They got squeezed from both ends in entertainment.
I’m not going to complain or make excuses about being a boomer. I had no more control over when I was born than you did. But I do have the advantage of living through these decades and studying up on them after the fact. Casting aspersions on the all-pervasive boomers may be fashionable, but doesn’t conform to reality. It’s especially not true when the subject is television. The change is not something that is happening now. It happened when you were in grade school.
Really? You think Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Heroes, Desperate Housewives, The Sopranos, 24, Law & Order, and Grey’s Anatomy are aimed at children? Just to name a few shows that have been recently popular.
I’d even go so far as to say that shows for teenagers and children are practically an endangered species on primetime network television.
Aside from Fox Sunday night and a few CW shows, can anyone name any network show that’s aimed at teens or children?
I hate arguments like this. First, you’ve misrepresented my statement by making it about children rather than a younger-than-boomer demographic. Second, you’ve ignored that my argument was entirely about network television.
Then you countered it by naming eight whole shows, two of which aren’t even on the networks, and which represent the last 16 years of broadcasting.
Cherry picking from the dozens of shows per year, or hundreds of shows that have debuted since Law & Order came on, is meaningless.
Look at the totality of the network schedules. Yes, include Fox and the CW since they count. Look at the way reality shows have come to dominate ratings. Look at the way news shows have vanished from the schedule. Look at the way movies have vanished from the schedule. Look at the totality of network television over the last decade.
Then, if you still have an argument, present it.
You said “it’s nearly impossible to find a show aimed at adults.” What you meant was, apparently, “people over 60.”
As I’m only 32, I guess I haven’t made it to adulthood yet.
And when you said “nearly impossible” apparently you meant “when you ignore all the good, popular shows, it turns out all the rest suck.”
If you want me to keep going, Network only? Jericho, Pushing Daisies, ER, Scrubs, CSI, Prison Break, The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Bones, Seinfeld, Friends, House MD…
I’m 38 and I fully expect the Law & Order universe to outlive me.
Television will be with us forever. I expect the networks to change into something almost unrecognizable- leaving broadcasting and schedules behind for one thing. But there will be big studios making shows. People will watch those shows.
The form of the Boob Tube, or Glass Teat as it is often called, will change. But the sweet, sweet nourishment will remain the same.
So essentially, you admit you have no idea what you’re talking about.
You can keep your head in the sand if you want, but I’d say we live in the greatest era ever as far as quality TV shows. Sure there’s a lot of crap to sift through, but over the last decade or so, there are better-written, better-acted shows than ever before. Long-form dramas that stand alongside the finest movies in terms of quality, smart and witty sitcoms that don’t insult or underestimate their viewers, even sci-fi series aimed at intelligent, discriminating audiences rather than children and basement-dwellers. HBO had a lot to do with this new wave of great television, but I’d say you can start tracing it back to unconventional network series like Twin Peaks and Northern Exposure in the early '90s.
I agree that the quality of TV is better now than it has ever been. Sure, there are a lot of reality shows, but even those are done very well. I’m 44 now, and when I was younger, prime time television was full of dreck like the Love Boat, Three’s Company, Golden Girls, etc.
It’s no secret that there are desirable demographic groups advertisers aim for. 18-24 year olds are one of them, because they are the most impressionable, and buying habits are fixed during those years. For example, if a person buys their first car and it’s a Ford or Toyota, there’s a much better than even chance that they’ll still be Ford or Toyota drivers in 20 years. So grabbing those people as customers has long-term positive benefit.
The next group is the 25-49 demographic, because these people have the most disposable income and are most willing to dispose of it.
After 49, people become harder to reach through advertising, and after retirement they are on fixed incomes and even less likely to be swayed by advertising. So these groups are less valuable, and less programming is aimed at them. Very popular TV shows have been cancelled simply because the audience they attracted was too old (“Hee-Haw” and “Green Acres” were both cancelled despite good ratings, because their audiences were too old).
Even if television programming hasn’t exactly followed the Boomers through life, the culture in general has. Every decade since I was born has been defined by the stage of life the boomers happned to be in. In the 60’s, the boomers were teenagers, and we got rock and roll and woodstock defining the times. In the 70’s, they were hooking up and celebrating early adulthood, and we got a decade of disco and partying. In the 80’s, they were building careers and starting families, and we got a resurgence of conservative values and shows like ‘30-something’.
I fully expect the next two decades to be dominated by age-related issues. Health care and Social Security, the rights of the elderly, etc.
As far as the future of television, I think it’s going to go through the same process as music is going through now - the era of centralized control and production is coming to an end. It’s going to fracture and fragment and move online. Just as music is losing its ability to generate mega-superstars, TV will lose its ability to draw tens of millions of viewers to a single show. That’s already happening with the explosion of cable - A show like MAS*H had far more weekly viewers than a top-ranked show today has. That trend will continue.
And this is a good thing. We might not get any more packaged mega-stars like Britney Spears, but the field is much more open and accessible for smaller bands. And while we may not get more mega-hits like MAS*H, it’s more possible than ever for an unknown talent to create a video program and have it find an audience. Even if it’s on Youtube.
I see TV as most do (in a state of decline). Cable TV has failed in its premise (no commercials, higher quality shows). Instead, cable channeles have all of the commercials, and most of the shows are cheaply made. How long can youstand watching Emeril make pork chops? I find myself rapidly channel surfing, as soon as a commercial comes on-I know that I can count on at least 5-6 commercials, till the regulr program resumes.
A wasteland, indeed. :smack:
Agreed. I rarely watch television because most of my free time’s taken up by music, the internet, or reading but there are a lot of shows out there that I keep meaning to watch whenever I get the chance and the list is ever-growing. We’ve never had so many entertainment opportunites at our disposal as we do in the present day; you just have to know where to look or who to ask for ideas.
With the Mega blockbuster sfx movies tv is enjoying a healthy comeback.
Movies are so damn expensive to make, most studios aren’t willing to take chances. So we end up with movies abut superheroes, robots and insane action flicks. The whole purpose is to rake in as much as possible during opening weekend and a few weeks after that to cover cost. I see at boxofficemojo that Spider-Man 3 made half its revenue during the opening weekend, but also that the profit largely comes from countries outside the U.S.
I’d go so far as to speculate that the popcorn movie trend isn’t exectly about going for teens, as much as going for international sales. To appeal to many cultures, there really has to be a very low common denominator. Considering that movies are dubbed in most countries, with less dialogue it’s cheaper to distribute.
I think the movie run largely works as a giant ad campaign, to drum up international interest and boost DVD sales, followed by sales to cable companies and later re-packaging the movie in a new way (I saw **Flight of the Phoenix ** original and remake in one package the other day).
Tv is benefiting with the influx of people who don’t work so much in movies. With fewer, but bigger, projects, former movies stars are now tv stars and enoying a healthy career. Same goes for other people in the industry.
So writing is better, and so is acting, directing, editing. People also realize that even movies that try on serious subjects, tend to be on the shallow side due to the short format of a movie. The Wire on HBO is probably the best storytelling about policework and criminals ever. Any media.
I find myself constantly being bored with movies. I turned of **PoTC:3 ** after about a third and **American Gangster ** bored me to sleep - I mean it, I actually fell asleep.
However, I can easily find 15-20 hours of tv a given week that’s enoyable and entertaining. And, depending on time of the year, about 5 - 10 hours are outstanding. Depending on the strike, this spring promised the return of Lost, **BSG ** and **24 ** (which is bad, but very fun). HBO is showing the fifth and final season of The Wire. Doctor Who will be back as will a re-tooled Torchwood.
To get all the goodies, one has to plan, look at schedules, use a dvr. Just flipping on the tv and hoping to find something is futile. There’s a lot of dreck out there, but having about two hours of entertainment, in the form of tv-shows, every night is something Hollywood can’t drum up with movies.