TeeVee, Or Not TeeVee

I stopped watching television local news, not because of any partisan leaning by the stations, but because when I would flip through to the four different channels offering the "evening news" at the 11:00 p.m. hour in Los Angeles (channels 2, 4, 7 and 13), none of them deviated from an apparent universal format. They all opened with the same lead story, they all went to commercial break at the same time, they all had the weather at the same time, the sports reports at the same time, etc. I was amazed at the cookie cutter format of my local news. It turned out to be the same for the 6:30 p.m. national news on the three network channels ... starting out with the same lead, taking the commercial breaks at the same time, and covering pretty much exactly the same stories.

I stopped watching television cable news when the Iraq invasion began, as it became obvious to me that no one on any of those channels, including the always trusted CNN, had the balls to actually go against this administration's "rah, rah, rah, let's go get 'em" version of the invasion. I feel lucky, in a way, because I have never subjected myself to the up and coming O'Reilly, Hannity, and others of the fabled FOX cable network, and I was easily able to identify the kool aid drinkers on CNN, MSNBC and the rest.

Of course, I had already been boycotting television programming on network for years, refusing to watch anything on ABC, CBS or NBC. I grew up in an era where you actually had a television "season" and shows were packaged and sold in 26 episode formats. There was the summer season that had re-runs and summer special fill-in shows, and then in September, back to the new season. In addition, shows were never pulled after just two or three episodes and shelved, because their viewer ratings weren't in the zillions. If that were the case, Archie Bunker would never have become a household name, and the Hawkeye/Trapper John shennanigans would not have become television legend. Hell, even the Partridge Family had a better run with worse ratings than say, Whoppi a couple of years back. Goldberg's show was funny, way funnier than say "According to Jim" or "Still Standing." Shows that I gave a shit about, like "American Dreams," "Joan of Arcadia," "Once and Again," and "My So Called Life" were axed without ever having more than two or three seasons in which to capture their audience, despite the fact that these shows wowed the critics.

And don't even get me started on reality shows, although I will admit to actually being addicted to two of them, "Survivor" and "The Amazing Race." I guess you would have to say we all embraced the reality show format when it first presented itself in MTV's "Real World" in New York. That show was interesting in that it focused on a household with different personalities, ideologies and behaviours, and forced them to come together is some fashion over a commonality such as a job they would all have to be responsible for throughout the show's series. None of the sucessive "Real World" participants ever rose to the level that the first group in New York did, and nowadays, the show is just a screen test for the latest party person and alcoholic.

I never watched a single season of "American Idol" until this most recent one (where Melinda Doolittle did NOT win), although I watched the final four presented in the very first season. Having grown up in the entertainment industry, I had to admit the final four had vocal talents, but what put me off in the first place was forcing the singers to have to perform that god awful song "A Moment Like This." It was obvious that the show's first season was going to try and tie in to it's publicity grind a songwriter's product, and I did not understand what that was all about. Fortunately, the subsequent seasons veered away from forcing a song upon the singers. I didn't watch the finals of any other seasons, but like most of America and the world, I started watching the first couple of weeks of auditions, where they showed the funny people who thought they could sing. But this season, I decided to actually watch the show to see how they were able to weed out the unqualified and get to those with fabulous pipes in the end. I still think Melinda was and is the best performer out of all the ones that I have had to listen to as the past winners of this program.

And, I have to admit to being a fan, now, of the show "So You Think You Can Dance." Apparently it is supposed to be their third season, but for the life of me, I thought last season where Benji won, was their first. Oh well. Because my background is more dance than singing, and because factually, you don't have to really have training if you actually have a naturally good singing voice, but you most definitely have to know dance to be able to follow a choreographer in any fashion, I was impressed very much with the talent pool that was pulled into this show. And even more so, amazed at the quality work of the different choreographers. While the dancers that are included in the top 20 include a handful that are not trained, and it has been fun to watch them step it up, so to speak, when they have to perform a dance routine that is outside of their speciality, it is clear that the top dancer(s) will end up being culled from the pool of those that are/have been trained. With all the ballet classes and jazz classes that I have taken since I was two years old, I never fail to find myself with toes fully pointed out whenever I am watching dancing of any form!

Cable television programming has offered better fare than "free" television as the networks are classified. I'm an unabashed fan of "The Shield," but like I mentioned way back in the beginning of this piece, there is no longer a 26 week format to television programming. Shows like "The Shield" and "Rescue Me," and even the ones on SciFi channel like the Stargate series and such, all run in six or seven episodes and call that a "season." The wait in between seasons for "The Shield" were more than six months! But even on cable, some really good shows get nixed, like my most favorite of all, "Farscape."

What is the point of this rant? I don't know. But last night's season finale of "Stargate Atlantis" was just a tad weak for me, and two seasons ago, I lost interest in "Rescue Me" despite the fact that I believe the show is well written and acted. I'm pretty bored with television as a whole, and the only real reason it is still on in my house is because I'm a sports pig. Yeah, I watch football, baseball, hockey, basketball, and an occasional boxing match! I used to get a kick out of WWF back in the 90's, but that's not really a sport.

Oh, and I am a sucker for an old western. Thank goodness for the Western Channel, where I can still catch shows like "Bat Masterson," "The Rifleman," (when I was 11 or so, I had a major crush on Johnny Crawford) and "Gunsmoke." I understand the "Law & Order" series (the original) is coming up on it's 18th season. "Gunsmoke" for all of you that give a shit, holds the record as the longest running television series, with 20 seasons under its belt.

(Footnote: Do not give credence to Wikipedia's assertion that "Gunsmoke" is the second longest running series, next to "Disney" programming. That's balderdash!)

All links courtesy of Wikipedia.