From this article on the lineup changes at the TV Land cable channel:
Jones blathers on about the power of catering to this supposedly under-served demographic, noting that this year’s “American Idol” winner–Taylor Hicks–had grey-haired boomer looks, and “I don’t think it was an accident.”
The single most coddled, pampered, studied, and indulged generation of Americans has got to be the Baby Boomers. Thousands of books have been written feting their semi-revolutionary exploits in the '60s, their centered cult of self-satisfaction in the '70s, and their justified philosophy of yuppie avarice in the '80s. Films from “Easy Rider” to “The Big Chill” have wasted hours of celluloid discussing their insipid navel-gazing. And if you doubt that TV hasn’t already been singularly fascinated with the Me-generation, please explain the in-its-day popularity of treackle like “thirtysomething” and “American Dreams”.
I’m not even considering here the profound effect excessive pandering to these self-aggrandizing whiners has had on public policy, but who doesn’t know that Social Security will go broke because of them, or that the US health care system is a shambles because of them?
So pardon me for laughing at the hypocrisy of this idiot who thinks Boomers are “overlooked” and need someone to communicate “with them on their own terms.” “TV Land” was never really on the cultural radar of anyone who matters, and promoting it as yet another past-its-time outlet trying to lap up scraps from these lingering, don’t-know-when-the-party’s-over, self-appointed arbiters of taste guarantees it never will be again.
The sad part is, “All in the Family” was something provocative and potentially revolutionary in it’s day, and Archie Bunker’s character said things then no TV writer would dare pen today. Now it’s treated as just another bit of nostagic pabulum for the generation that never met a marketing plan it didn’t like.