The general decline in standards today

[AtomicEraTom]

I am with you there, too. I've had to walk away during some of their Civil War programming.

One of my major complaints about the History Channel is that it's too general and often inaccurate. Though in all fairness there's only so much you can squeeze into an hour-long documentary.

I actually do enjoy Swamp People in small doses.

I second that . You gotta love Troy.
[video=youtube_share;SmF120n6lZ8]http://youtu.be/SmF120n6lZ8[/video]

It's funny you mention this. I was at the Chevy Dealership getting some work done on my truck during our last shuttle launch. Trececk's is a good sized dealership with a good sized staff. When they were getting ready to launch, everyone stopped to huddle around the TV and watch it. It was a wonderful feeling of what America used to be like. Now, hardly anybody cares about such things anymore.

Nowadays, with 300+ channels to choose from, it can't possibly be harder to find something worth watching than back in the day. That is, if it's true that back in the day there were three channels - one per network. Now, I agree with the general premise that it's really hard to find something worth watching on TV. To me, the "golden era" of television was the 80s - cartoons were never better. I don't really watch TV anymore, though. The internet has replaced TV in my life.

From what I can gather on watching TV in its infancy, watching TV was something of a family event. Since there was by and large nothing worth watching, people didn't sit around it so much. Now, if astronauts were landing on the moon, or the president was making an address, then everyone would huddle around. That's the image I have in my head as put forward by shows like The Wonder Years. I'm not sure if the state of TV is in decline or ascent.

Nothing to watch vs nothing good to watch: At the end of the day, you're not happy watching TV. Seems like an even break at best.

I completely agree with you, here. My dad, brother, and I really like the History Channel, but always say it'd be nice to see something besides Nazis on there once in a while.

I'd love an actual history channel. I quickly grew disenfranchised with the one that's currently available, because, even when it did have history programming, it was nothing but WWII and Vietnam - interviews with vets. That's sort of heresy to say here, but at the time, I was in the middle of, and graduating from, a BA in history with a focus on medieval and renaissance. With 24 hours in a day, a good history channel could feature 48 historical time periods with a program to each. That's sort of what I was hoping to get.

 

[lolly_loisides]

I completely agree with you, here. My dad, brother, and I really like the History Channel, but always say it'd be nice to see something besides Nazis on there once in a while.

In our house we call the History Channel the Hitler Channel. Seems more accurate.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Nowadays, with 300+ channels to choose from, it can't possibly be harder to find something worth watching than back in the day. That is, if it's true that back in the day there were three channels - one per network.

The problem with modern television is that when you have 300 channels, or whatever the number is, trying to fill 24 hours a day with programming, especially channels that program to a specific interest group is that there's only so much quality material available, and before too long it's been exhausted. The lowest common denominator is inevitable -- it's cheaper, it's easier, and most people would rather watch garbage than something worthwhile.

Television started its decline in the mid-fifties, when the emphasis switched from live programming produced in New York to filmed programming produced in Hollywood -- cheap westerns and formula cop shows and the like. You still had some quality filmed shows mixed in for a while -- the Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, etc. -- but by tne end of the sixties, the formulas had won out, and the lowest common denominator had won. You could still see quality shows in reruns for the next decade or so after that, but once people decided they'd rather watch rubbish in color instead of something quality in black and white, the lowest common denominator won again. It *always* wins.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

The problem with modern television is that when you have 300 channels, or whatever the number is, trying to fill 24 hours a day with programming, especially channels that program to a specific interest group is that there's only so much quality material available, and before too long it's been exhausted. The lowest common denominator is inevitable -- it's cheaper, it's easier, and most people would rather watch garbage than something worthwhile.

Television started its decline in the mid-fifties, when the emphasis switched from live programming produced in New York to filmed programming produced in Hollywood -- cheap westerns and formula cop shows and the like. You still had some quality filmed shows mixed in for a while -- the Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, etc. -- but by tne end of the sixties, the formulas had won out, and the lowest common denominator had won. You could still see quality shows in reruns for the next decade or so after that, but once people decided they'd rather watch rubbish in color instead of something quality in black and white, the lowest common denominator won again. It *always* wins.

I find it interesting that as the "tube" television was replaced by the "capacitor/transistor" tube-less television, things parallel going right "down the tube" (yes, pun intended).

I want my Soupy Sales re runs, please!

 

[Nathan Dodge]

I'm particularly tired of "alien inventions" type shows on the History Channel. It demeans historians everywhere.

There's also the corporate mandate of airing Star Wars documentaries every time George Lucas has yet another dvd re-release to shill. These types of programs also go out of their way to tie in with all the angels, UFOs, and mysticism that the History Channel has thrived on in recent years. It seems to be tied in with all the New Age flakery that boomers fawn over as well as tapping into the nostlagia that Gen Xers have for Lucas' fantasy movies. Just another step in the dumbing down of what could've been a promising channel.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

There's also the corporate mandate of airing Star Wars documentaries every time George Lucas has yet another dvd re-release to shill. These types of programs also go out of their way to tie in with all the angels, UFOs, and mysticism that the History Channel has thrived on in recent years. It seems to be tied in with all the New Age flakery that boomers fawn over as well as tapping into the nostlagia that Gen Xers have for Lucas' fantasy movies. Just another step in the dumbing down of what could've been a promising channel.

You have made to view a very good observation, you are right it is perhaps said, some sort of a marketing ploy, for them to do this with how they show things. I never would have thought of it that way had you not made this clear. Thank you!

 

[TidiousTed]

I have a theory that Cunard line, the only people still having passenger ships crossing the Atlantic, owns the National Geographic Chanel as about the only thing they show is plane crashes.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

I have a theory that Cunard line, the only people still having passenger ships crossing the Atlantic, owns the National Geographic Chanel as about the only thing they show is plane crashes.

You may have well found out something new there, later I just may check into that. Thanks!

 

[Nathan Dodge]

I want my Soupy Sales re runs, please!

You'll be happy to know--if you didn't already--that the Jewish Life TV (JLTV) network airs The Soupy Sales Show (and Jack Benny, too).

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Today's version of that song:


Eeen-Ter-Net


Hey, Mr. General Public, do you realize?
That we got a generation here of staring eyes
The parents never bother getting housework set
They just sit around gawking at the Eeen-ter-net.
Kiddies never run and playing out of door
And top of that they never reading books no more
You ask them who's de father of our country, Mon
They say it's either Mark Zuckerberg or Eduardo Saverin.

Eeen-ter-net. Eeen-ter-net.
I'm sick from looking at the Eeen-ter-net.
I got weak in the eyes, weak in the head likewise
From sitting and looking at the Eeen-ter-net ...

 

[LoveMyHats2]

You'll be happy to know--if you didn't already--that the Jewish Life TV (JLTV) network airs The Soupy Sales Show (and Jack Benny, too).

Now you tell me! Thanks I will look into that and maybe see if I can get that channel!

 

[LoveMyHats2]

Today's version of that song:


Eeen-Ter-Net


Hey, Mr. General Public, do you realize?
That we got a generation here of staring eyes
The parents never bother getting housework set
They just sit around gawking at the Eeen-ter-net.
Kiddies never run and playing out of door
And top of that they never reading books no more
You ask them who's de father of our country, Mon
They say it's either Mark Zuckerberg or Eduardo Saverin.

Eeen-ter-net. Eeen-ter-net.
I'm sick from looking at the Eeen-ter-net.
I got weak in the eyes, weak in the head likewise
From sitting and looking at the Eeen-ter-net ...

Haha good one, Marc.

I can see that being done on some show like "dancing with the stars" for their song music! One two cha cha cha!

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

There's also the corporate mandate of airing Star Wars documentaries every time George Lucas has yet another dvd re-release to shill. These types of programs also go out of their way to tie in with all the angels, UFOs, and mysticism that the History Channel has thrived on in recent years. It seems to be tied in with all the New Age flakery that boomers fawn over as well as tapping into the nostlagia that Gen Xers have for Lucas' fantasy movies. Just another step in the dumbing down of what could've been a promising channel.

You think that's bad? Wait till Dan Brown's next book comes out!

 

[LoveMyHats2]

You think that's bad? Wait till Dan Brown's next book comes out!

I'll bite, who is Dan Brown? Well, I can search on the web but have not been informative enough lately to know!

 

[scottyrocks]

I remember when TLC was called The Learning Channel and it was essentially a counterpart to The Discovery Channel. Between the two of them, they must've aired that Wings program-- not the banal sitcom, but the hour-long recruitment ad for the US military--a million times over the course of the 1990s. Now TLC concerns itself with 700lb bedridden tragedies, people with 27 kids, impish "little people", obsessive-compulsive hoarders, and the on-camera child abuse that is "Toddlers and Tiaras"; all under the paper-thin guise of "reality."

I have found that over the last few years, my channel surfing results in fewer and fewer stops of any duration due to the inanity of what I see on TV, including most channels I used to watch with some regularity. Some of it was due to sheer repetition of programming, and some of it to the obvious slide of quality. 'Reality' shows are, for the most part, asinine.

 

[scottyrocks]

That squeezing certain things done in a hour sure brings back some fond memories of my car's back seat when I was 18....but that is another story on a "different" channel.....

Braggart. <hehehe>

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I'll bite, who is Dan Brown? Well, I can search on the web but have not been informative enough lately to know!

Dan Brown is the author of The Da Vinci Code.

 

[scottyrocks]

Define- haters. We seem to have less lynchings and beatings than before.

If one simply define haters as anyone that doesn't share one's opinion then one is being unrealistic.

There's always been haters. It's just that now we have discussion boards on the internet so we can spout off to people all over the world instead of just the front stoop or the corner pub.

 

[scottyrocks]

I dunno about that. I find that for me the bigger time thief is this here Interwebby thingybob.

Yes, it can be a time-waster, but,

I don't have the kind of time, or job, where I'm able to sit in front of the pooter all day, so I read when I have the spare few minutes. If you genuinely have that kind of time, or job, then I guess it's not really wasting time. Rather, it's filling time.

 

[scottyrocks]

It is amusing that...

Internet=Evil

....has not been mentioned in this pity party.

Sure it can be evil, but it has also opened up to me information I would never have the time to cull from more traditional sources. In that regard it is far from evil.