the end of "arts" on tv...

[acroyear]

Bad move, A&E : Pharyngula:

The A&E Channel has a new show coming up: Psychic Kids: Children of the Paranormal. Sounds awful already, doesn't it? But it's worse than you think: they're looking for disturbed kids who think they've got magic powers, and then they're flying in "professional psychics" to coach them in dealing with their awesome powers, i.e., indulge their delusions, get off on feeling superior to unhappy kids, and collect a paycheck for psychic child abuse.

Yes, they've gotten that horrid: training kids to either be charlatans or self-delusional, for money.

[...]

I mentioned that I have cable…but there's almost nothing on. The quality has been on a steady decline for years; cable stations like A&E, TLC, the History Channel, and the Discovery Channel were all set up with the noble goals of providing good educational/informative programming, and they've all sold out to provide little more than dreck ala Psychics with Serious Mental Illnesses Hunting Hitler's Ghost While Driving A Big Truck with Their Freakish Family. It's cheap, it's easy, the 'talent' they hire are all boring nobodies with only their disturbed personalities as a selling point — these are modern freak shows, plain and simple — and audiences eat them up.

Bravo's decline from being the arts elitist channel it was 25 years ago is among the most disturbing (and no more West Wing reruns, so the channel is now exclusively "reality" programming), although TLC's descent into HG-lite is pretty bad, too.  I keep resisting dropping the cable (well, satellite), mostly because we're too far out to get a decent digital tv signal over the air and I'd hate to not have the news available the next time a "9/11" level incident happens, but aside from "Scrubs" reruns, there's almost nothing we watch when it comes up that we haven't already already got the DVDs for (or acquired through some other means).

Still, there's something odd going on - there's something rather comforting about dealing with (2)57 channels and nothing on in terms of *NOT* having to make a choice.  There's a mental "investment" that happens when one picks out a CD or picks out a DVD - a mental commitment to watch/listen to the whole thing (and actually paying attention to it), and if you can't do that, you feel a guilt pang about putting it in.

That investment doesn't happen with radio or TV - you don't mind talking over it, you don't mind muting it for a minute, you don't mind walking out of the room and walking back in.  "No problem, no guilt", as someone else out there is watching it, too.  it is background noise without commitment...and I'm not sure I want to give that up.

As much as we'd walk out of the room and walk in, go get coffee, take showers, flip back-n-forth to Today Show for weather, leave when we're ready to go, etc., during The West Wing repeats in the morning, we'd NEVER do that if I were to actually put a West Wing DVD into the same TV at the same time of the morning.

That's kinda why it helps that I've turned my many prog-rock DVDs into a "video jukebox" - rip them to AVI or WMV, separated by song, and playlists that randomize them.  Rather than a concert video that I feel I have to watch all of, or what's the point, I can enjoy the music without commitment, without the need to be in the room all the time or else feel like I'm missing something important...like MTV back in the good ole days.

Comments

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the way I mostly treat TV since I got my Tivo. I tend to dedicate my time to the shows that I do record and do less browsing of the TV channels.

A&E? That was the channel my mom used to watch her mysteries. I think it lost its identity a long time ago.

As for Discovery Channel, I still think "Mythbusters" is worth a damn as a fun way to apply the scientific method to sometimes very silly things. I also like "Dirty Jobs", which is certainly educational in jobs that most people and "How it's Made". I'm also going to be Tivoing "Brew Masters". Personally, I think Discovery has gotten better in recent years, when it had previously become the "American Chopper" channel.

The thing about most cable channels is that they pretty much have to be about entertainment first to keep the viewers. The challenge comes in developing programming where people are learning about something while they are being entertained.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

yeah, Discovery and Mythbusters remains on the "ok or better" list, though Discovery too has had some "paranormal" programs that are utterly uncritical and credulous to the subject matter.

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

Looking at the show list, it looks like "Ghost Lab" is the only show that fits that description. Course, where it comes to science, it is easier to prove that something exists rather than something doesn't exist. If you are going to have a show of that kind, at least have them trying to prove what they are trying to find. At least they aren't trying to make up stuff that isn't there.

Personally, I'd have more of a problem with reality shows that seem to be a questionable fit for the station. ("Auction Kings" and "Oddities" seem to fall into the "American Chopper" model, for example.)