Network Executives Should Really Pull Their Heads Out of Their Sphincters

I pose a question to you, dear reader: Is it just me, or do the television programs currently on air fall to a miserable low when compared to the television shows of old? (please note, I am only referring to broadcast television here; some of us do not have the privilege of having 200 channels with nothing to watch)

I do not understand why, but it seems as if the network executives of the present somehow believe that viewers would rather watch stupid reality shows like Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll or Fear Factor. Forget mental stimulation. In fact, forget educational television. This problem is not only relegated to shows aimed at the general young adult to adult public. Even our children's programming has become depressed to a new intellectual low. Long gone are engaging shows like Wishbone and Ghostwriter which encouraged children to read. They have since been replaced by shallow fluff like Boohbah and Teletubbies. (if I may digress for a moment: what the heck are Teletubbies? they live underground and spend their days eating custard and dancing funky dances under a sun embedded with a freakish image of a smiling baby. I do not understand how any human being, in a sober state of mind, would be able to come up with such a premise as this for a children's show)

I don't know about you, dear reader, but this phenomenon of "dumbassifying" (to borrow from Tim Goodman) television seems like an insult to me. I can just picture a group of network executives gathered together in a room, flinging out perfectly good shows on the mere basis that "our viewers do not have the intellectual capacity to comprehend this material". It's very depressing to imagine that so many good shows, full and ripe with so much potential, get rejected simply because some people in suits think that their audience will not "get it". They are essentially trading quality gains for financial gain. And I hope I am not the only one who sees this as being detrimental to our overall well-being.

Granted, there have been some quality shows which have been allowed to slip through the cracks. Shows like House, 24, and Veronica Mars. But some of them get cancelled even before they have a chance to take off, simply because of ratings. (I refer you to the case of Joss Whedon's Firefly, which only saw 11 episodes aired before it got the proverbial ax.) And generally speaking, quality shows have become less prolific and harder to find these days.

Modern day television has now become the new opiate of the masses, much more so than religion ever was.