What if YOUR tastes determined what shows on TV?

Cafe Society
1

What if all the network and cable TV programmers were all struggling to create programming that suited YOUR tastes instead of that mysterious 18-35 retarded male that they seem to like? How would that change TV?

For instance, take my tastes: news programs would be very different. Anytime a political or social figure made a statement it would be rigorously truth-squadded immediately after the statement was aired. Statements contrary to fact or egregious attempts at spin would be relentlessly exposed.

There would also be an ombudsman segment where egregious lies by political commentators on other channels would be truth squadded.

Any failure to do this would be considered cheap, shoddy journalism.

Most entertainment programming would be SciFi, fantasy and action/adventure programming of the sort that used to be commonplace on TV but has disappeared lately in favor of dull reality shows and CSI stuff. The programs would have predictable plots so you could have them on in the background without paying much attention to them while you did interesting stuff on your computer. Whenever anything interesting is about to happen, there’ll be musical cues to let you know that a figtht or a sex scene or a sense of wonder scene is about to happen, so you can watch.

Oh, there’d be sex scenes alrighty, but not enough to slow down the plot. Plenty of nudity, too. Maybe there’d be a secret code you could enter to blip that stuff out if you objected to if. But they’d be there.

The most popular cable channel would be Naked Women Dancing with naked women dancing to excellent pop, rock, jazz and so forth music. Maybe a separate Naked Women Dancing Channel for difference kinds of music.

The next most popular channel would be Half Naked women dancing. 'Nuff said.

There would be a Mythbusters Channel where the “mythbusters” approach of testing various and beliefs and assertions to see how they jibe with reality. It would take on controversial topics like Intelligent Design, the benefits of jailing drug offenders, etc., testing assertions for and against various beliefs as well as is possible and presenting results. There would be plenty of followup shows where objections raised by viewers to procedures, etc., could be tested and dealt with.

There would be porn comedies with interesting characters and good plots. They would actually be funny. Those who didn’t like them could use the secret code.

That oughtta do it for now. Many of you might have other ideas on how TV would be different if your tastes controlled the medium. Your call, of course.

2

Heck, Evil Captor, I’d watch your programming!

I might add a whitewater boating channel.

3

More animation.

No soap operas.
More specialty channels, with tighter focus on topic.

4

No “reality” television.

No shows about renovating your house.

Lots of good but mindless sitcoms (I watch sitcoms to be mindless).

The Daily Show acually evey day.

After 10, hardcore porn.

5

It’s hard to imagine any show other than “The View” that wouldn’t be improved by more nudity.

6

Yeah, there would be a lot of stuff NOT on my TV programming. No melodramas like “Dawson’s Creek” or “Gilmore Girls.” No mindless sappy stuff like “Full House” or “Seventh Heaven.” Most of PBS is gonna have to go. We can keep “Nova” and “Frontline” but that’s about it. OK, those ballroom dancing programs can stay, if they dump the old-timey dancing and stick with stuff like jive and Latin dancing. Since this is PBS they can keep their clothes on, but they do have to wear sexy stuff (they already do that anyway).

No televangelists or religious programming. Cooking shows … only if the hosts are female and hot and lick their fingers a lot.

The news would have to be new stuff. People killing each other in the middle east is not news. When they stop, that’s news. Car crashes are not news. New tech for cars is news.

Ooh, truth-squadding for commercials! Yeah, we’ll have to have a program along those lines.

Hentai … let adult swim TRULY be adult swim.

Golf … I think not. Fishing, no way. If it doesn’t make the participants break a sweat, it’s not a sport worth watching.

7

If my taste determined what was on television there would ultimately be no television. Whose going to watch the shows I like? Not many people. Hell, maybe they’d have go spend time with their families doing such horrible things as communicating with one another or excercising. <shudder>

Marc

8

I think if they were doing tv for me they’d cut it back to about 3 channels to discourage me from constantly wondering what’s on the other channel. One channel would show documentaries all day, one would show classic and award winning movies, and the other would show a hodgepodge of international tv shows with subtitles including comedies, mysteries, singing and dancing shows and the news twice a day. Everyone but me would hate it.

9

I like the format Evil Captor has suggested, but I have two additions:

  1. Ken Burns gets his own channel, plus an unlimited budget.

  2. We need a “blowing shit up” channel. This may already exist in America, but the selection in Japan is sorely lacking.

10

Don’t sweat it. It’ll never happen.

11

No, in this fantasy, everyone will have the same tastes you do, whatever those tastes might be. Everybody would love it.

12

Works for me.

Mythbusters Channel would definitely handle much blowing shit up stuff. I don’t know how much blowing shit up you need, but they definitely do it, like the time they vaporized a cement mixer to get all the cement out of it. Or the time one of their rockets exploded rather than fired. Or the time they tested the exploding overalls myth.

Oh, yeah, they blow stuff up, alrighty.

13

All the religion and home shopping stations would dissappear.
\Prime time tv would have Rush Limbaugh in a dunk tank with electric eels.
Soap operas and sit coms would be gone.
The main channels would have National Geographic and Animal channels.
pbs would be completely funded so I could avoid pledge week.
Link tv would be a main channel with Mosaic,Democracy now etc and be funded
Fox would have people with pies to throw in their face when they say something stupid. It would require a lot of pies
The entertainment channel would be banned. Celebreties lives are their business and I don’t care what they do.
South Park , Simpsons etal would run 24 hrs a day.
HBO would show movies made in the last 50 years.

14

If my tastes controlled TV…

New episodes of Futurama, Firefly, and Rocky & Bullwinkle.

Rachael Ray’s 30 Minute Topless Meals.

Alton Brown nude, all the time (for the wife, to promote domestic harmony)

I second the “Blowing Shit Up” channel

BBCAmerica would play everything ever even remote associated with Diana Rigg, Felicity Kendall or Helen Mirren constantly.

15 Food, Booze and General Hedonism channels

A channel of nothing but birds for my cats

15

The Youtube Show. All the best original clips that aren’t just clips of stuff already on TV. Would also include stuff that recombines or re-edits stuff in original and interesting ways, like the clip my wife found that was a montage of bits from the Saiyuki anime series set to the “The Way” by Fastball. A few get picked every week and funded to do a longer piece.

16

Regardless of what shows or channels, all programming would be on demand. No more of this waiting for things to come on or watching them when The Man says to watch them or having to choose between three or four different good things because they’re scheduled directly across from each other. Access to all extant programming from the history of television.

17

One channel would be devoted to Doctor Who.

The MST3K Chanel.

One channel would be devoted to cartoons especially Futurama/Simpsons.

One channel would be devoted to 50’s 60’s and 70’s exploitation films and other weird, obscure and forgotten films of the drive-in era.

There would be MTV, but it would show music videos - all the time.

There would be a How-to channel - with no limit on what the topic could be.

These could keep me content for a good long time.

18

You watch Nigella then?

Ahh, the Brainiac (Science Abuse) channel.

You need Sky One, they seem to show about eight Simpsons episodes a day and are currently (re)running series one of Futurama. Yesterday they ran six (6) episodes, you know there is such a thing as too much Futurama (old Futurama that is, new episodes would be great).

TV aimed at me would look a lot more like Radio Four without the Archers and Women’s Hour***** but definitely with the Pratchett dramatisations the Now Show, In Our Time and Clue and adding more blokey stuff like Top Gear that they don’t seem to have on Radio 4 (though the Lord****** knows they have plenty of girly programming).

The news would cover the sort of stuff Scentific American, New Scientist and Wired report, what’s going on with new research and technology – not “hey, people are killing each other in the middle east” and frelling sports results. I really don’t care if the blue team beat the red team at kicking/throwing/hitting-balls-with-sticks. All sports except world-class international football will be replaced with re-runs of The Rockford Files The Avengers and 1970s Doctor Who.

There would be a single LAST episode of every soap where a space marine runs through each scene and chain-guns everyone into SPOPD – and I mean the real cast – so there’s no way they can be brought back from the dead as tends to happen to soap characters. Then kill the writers too.

Captor I’m OK with all the CSIs but they could be improved by killing Heratio Caine once or twice (Aeon Flux style) in every episode of Miami.

*****and without Thought for the Day and You and Yours, I’d better stop there the list is getting a bit long. Let’s just say lose the touchy-feely frakking women’s stuff.

****** My cat.

19

The Science Channel would show science

The History Channel would show history

Arts & Entertainment (A&E) would show arts and entertainment

You would be able to learn something on The Learning Channel (TLC)

The Science Fiction Channel would show science fiction

And PBS would gear its prime-time educational programming to post-elementary-school intellects.

Oh, and good movies from all eras would be seen regularly on multiple channels.

20

There would really be a twenty-four hour Law and Order Channel (TBS doesn’t count - it shows too much basketball). Just the original and Special Victims Unit (It’s got Munch AND Ice T!), no Criminal Intent, please.

Also, it wouldn’t show the same twenty episodes over and over again. That’d be a nice change of pace.