Posted 6:47 PM by Gene

Few things exasperate me more than hearing we're in a SUPERMEGAPLATINUM AGE OF TELEVISION!!!!!!!!! First, there's a difference between good programming and CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED. Supermegaplatinum TV is the latter, consumed by an obsessive core audience that we'd guess is overwhelmingly coastal and liberal, and that takes almost conformist cues from fellow hardcore TV fans. This makes their masterpieces niche programming, with no hope whatever of achieving the wide appeal art needs to survive. We'd guess much of the supermegaplatinum stuff shares traits that appeal to niche viewers: "edge", profanity, dark photography, sledgehammer irony, and references to other CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED programs. In short it's TV's version of a circular argument, one it can never lose, but one that those who'd do without programming made in a straitjacket can never win. And most people don't want to THINK when they watch television, and though the medium's too much a diet of sedatives few want the electronic equivalent of AMPHETAMINES, especially when they're sold as GOOD FOR YOU. Hence the "success" of reality programs, whose fans at least have the honesty to want to be stupid once in a while.