I thought TV couldn't get any worse

[Cliptin]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2077075/

Though truthfully, If I had TV reception I would have watched.
At least the Orang won.

 

[SteveC]

The guest analyst was former Olympian Carl Lewis, who advised that in order to win, the zebra must "realize it's a race."

Maybe it's Carl Lewis who has to realize how much of a fool he is making himself out to be by being an analyst in a show like this.

It's not all bad news in TV land. The Simpsons were renewed for two more seasons. But, I'm still mad at Fox for cancelling Futurama.

 

[Mercutio]

Futurama got picked up by the Cartoon Network, IIRC.
Of course, that's a channel I couldn't get even if I had cable.

Kazaa Lite & my brother's VCR are what make the little bit of TV watching I do possible.

I just picked up the DVD release of the first season of "The Shield". I can't believe that show airs on basic cable, but it was worth the $36 I paid to get it.

 

[SteveC]

Futurama got picked up by the Cartoon Network, IIRC.
Of course, that's a channel I couldn't get even if I had cable.

They only picked up the reruns; there won't be any new episodes after Fox finishes airing this season's (which are actually leftovers from last season).

I just picked up the DVD release of the first season of "The Shield". I can't believe that show airs on basic cable, but it was worth the $36 I paid to get it.

Yeah, you can get away with a lot on basic cable with a TV-MA rating. I've seen a couple of episodes of it, and thought it was OK.

 

[jtr1962]

I guess you never saw the Anna Nicole Smith show. My mom put it on for about 1 minute out of curiosity, and quickly switched channels. One TV critic said after watching episode 1 that he didn't think anything could be worse-until he saw episodes 2 and 3. Crass, crude, vulgar, and obnoxious are some adjectives that come to mind. And this garbage has actually been renewed for a second season. A close second are Jerry Springer and it's spinoffs. How anybody could sit and listen to fat people airing their dirty laundry in public for an hour is beyond my comprehension.

 

[blakerwry]

that IS a terrible show

 

[Dozer]

Over the past several years my television viewing time has become less and less, for precisely the reasons communicated above--simply nothing worth watching. I'd much rather pick up a book most of the time.

 

[Tannin]

Hmmmph. Why pay to watch it on TV when I have the real thing right here at home?

 

[Fushigi]

As far as network TV goes, my wife & I like Crossing Jordan. The show is very well written and isn't afraid to explore the characters. She likes ER; I think the show is too over the top and was much better with Anthony Edwards. We both watch Enterprise but I have to say I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth it. The Star Trek franchise really seems to be running out of gas. I'm still interested in John Doe; I like the concept and the writing so far seems to be pretty good but there's just something missing.

On the cable side of things (satellite, actually), we still find South Park to be pretty funny, although my wife, who first got me interested in the show, doesn't care for it as much as she did back then. Otherwise, the Discovery family of channels seems to have the best overall programming. I still catch the occasional Iron Chef.

I watch other shows intermittently but there's little to attract me; it's more like a diversion than an interest.

- Fushigi

 

[jtr1962]

Enterprise is about the only thing I watch on network TV on a regular basis, and I agree the Star Trek franchise is running out of gas. I'll watch the World Series and Olympics, and maybe an occasional special if it looks interesting, but nothing else on network. The plethora of inane sitcoms, stupid reality shows, and Jerry Springer-type programs is particularly distasteful to me, as are the frequent, loud, annoying commercial breaks. At least with cable, if I want to watch a movie I don't have to be interrupted every 8 to 10 minutes with people trying to sell me cars or cell phones. There are also quite a few interesting documentary channels on cable as well. It's a shame that the very people who could benefit the most from these types of educational programs usually choose to watch mind numbing garbage instead.

I second what Dozer said about just reading a book instead, or in my case working on a electronics project, playing with MS Train Simulator, or any one of 100 other things that hold my attention more than most TV programs. Right now I would say in an average week I actually watch less than 5 hours of TV, although I have it on and listen to it while I'm doing something else for somewhat more than that.

 

[Cliptin]

How anybody could sit and listen to fat people airing their dirty laundry in public for an hour is beyond my comprehension.

Unfortunately, lots of people are less interested in bettering themselves than they are about feeling better about themselves. It has immediate gratification and is less work.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Unfortunately, lots of people are less interested in bettering themselves than they are about feeling better about themselves. It has immediate gratification and is less work.

cc on this

 

[Mercutio]

I read a lot, too. Usually a novel a night. Who says you can't do both? Considering how much work I have to do in order to watch a TV show I like, the few shows that I enjoy enough to watch I consider to be entirely worthwhile.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is quite possibly the highlight of my week.

I saw the first few episodes of Enterprise, jtr, and, well, the cast is OK, the effects very good, but that show seems intent on explaining every single thing that led up to the later series. I wish they didn't have to do that. Universal Studios needs to lay off Star Trek for a long, long time.

 

[blakerwry]

I like to watch Trading Spaces on The Learning Channel....

 

[Pradeep]

I read a lot, too. Usually a novel a night. Who says you can't do both? Considering how much work I have to do in order to watch a TV show I like, the few shows that I enjoy enough to watch I consider to be entirely worthwhile.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is quite possibly the highlight of my week.

Hmm I was just thinking about Buffy myself. Unfortunately in the States it is now being run on UPN, so I don't get to see the latest episodes. Arghh! At least I have seasons 1-5 on DVD (regions 4 and 2), USA is only up to Season 3 due to that damn syndication. I find Third Watch to be quite watchable, as are the Law and Orders. That Kingpin looks like a good one to check out in two weeks time.

 

[Cliptin]

I've enjoyed all two shows of Monk I saw.

 

[Mercutio]

Monk is a funny TV show. As I understand it, the first-run shows air on USA Network (a cable channel), while ABC/Disney- the network that originally developed the show, then passed on it - reairs "old" episodes later in the month.
Nothing like that has happened before, at least in the US.

A number of the "best" shows on TV - the Sopranos, the Shield - were originally developed for network television. These are shows that I happily enjoy, four episodes at a time, from their DVD releases (and/or kazaa)

In the meantime, we have Network news that can't be as timely and on-the-spot as CNN, the same bland sitcoms on every mainstream channel, and the best dramas on television are found outside the VFH band.

Network TV has obviously become irrelevant.

Pradeep: Bite me. If I could get two more seasons of Buffy on DVD, I'd have them. Of course, I'm partway into the season 3 DVD set myself, and I have the Buffy musical episode CD (which also has some incidental music composed for the show, which is really quite wonderful)
with which to content myself. Trade you a copy of the CD for a DVD rip of "The Body" or "Hush".

 

[Handruin]

I received the DVD set called Band of Brothers for Christmas this year and Laura and I have been watching them often. Sadly we are on the last of 11 episodes.

After watching the episode called Bastogne, it truly put “having a bad day” into perspective.

I won't proclaim to be anything close to a film critic, but Band of Brothers is done rather well. Each episode starts off with WWII veterans discussing their emotions and encounters during this rough time. Then the episode begins and you can see their stories in reenactment.

If you enjoyed Saving Private Ryan, these films have a number of similarities in quality. You get a sense of bonding as you grow with the men of Easy Company. At times you will witness gruesome action and violence, which sets you in a state of harsh reality. Much like the scene of D Day in saving Private Ryan, these films offer that style of action. It's without question that Spielberg and Hanks are involved.

Here is a quick overview of this series:
In Toccoa, Ga., 1942, a disparate group of young men begins voluntary training to become members of one of America's newest military regiments - the paratroopers. Under the harsh leadership of Lt. Sobel (David Schwimmer), members of the newly formed Easy Company go from green civilians to some of the Army's most elite soldiers. As training progresses, a rivalry flares between Sobel, whom the men despise, and Lt. Winters (Damian Lewis), a junior officer who's earned the respect and admiration of Easy Company.

 

[SteveC]

Somehow, I knew there would be more Buffy fans here. "Hush" and "The Body" are my favorites episodes; there're just so much higher quality episodes than your typical show. Their DVD release schedule is just stupid, though, but TV studios count on the syndication money.

The Sopranos, of course, is another excellent show, and last season's final episode may have been the best ever, after a somewhat disappointing season. My cable company just made a lot of people mad around here by announcing that you have to get an analog or digital cable box to receive HBO, on all TV sets you own. They say it's for security, but everyone knows it's just for money. They know that The Sopranos is extremely popular in this area and most people will pay the money.

 

[SteveC]

I forgot to mention, "24" is also a very good show that I'm watching this year. Unfortunately, because of the premise, it makes it hard to miss an episode and not be lost, which is part of the reason why I didn't watch the first season. I'll probably end up renting/buying the season 1 DVDs when I have time to watch them.

 

[Handruin]

I also enjoy the sopranos. I don't have HBO, so I wait until I can rent them. I'm eagerly awaiting the 4th season to come out on DVD.

 

[Pradeep]

If you don't mind spending about US$75 per season (and what is that afterall to a true Buffy fan) , you could order Season 4 and 5 of Buffy from Australia. I've shopped at www.ezydvd.com.au with no probs. The UK version from Amazon.co.uk is even more costly. I ended up getting Season 5 from the UK because it came out a month before Australia. The only prob with the Aus version is that it still comes in six Amaray cases instead of the nice "book" packaging of Region 2.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

What about "ordering" all of the above from Kazaa?! :roll:

 

[Mercutio]

TV shows on Kazaa are 1.) Of limited availability. Depending on which supernodes you're connected to, you may or may not be able to find what you want. 2.) Of widely variable video and sound quality.

Still, I'm usually able to find episodes of Buffy two days before they air (someone snags them, commercial and logo free, from the satellite feed), and the Sopranos within two hours of an episode's airtime.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Exactly Merc. Moreover, I only suggest Kazaa to those who want to see an episode or two, no matter the quality.

Real fans always get the genuine stuff. 8)

 

[Dozer]

I forgot to mention, "24" is also a very good show that I'm watching this year. Unfortunately, because of the premise, it makes it hard to miss an episode and not be lost, which is part of the reason why I didn't watch the first season. I'll probably end up renting/buying the season 1 DVDs when I have time to watch them.

I agree. "24" is a show that I will actually sit down and watch, as is "The Agency." (Do we see a theme in Dozer's television viewing forming)

Also, I must say that I'm pretty pumped up today. I watched "Gladiator" and "FOTR" yesterday afternoon and feel like I could conquer the world!

 

[James]

Jerry Springer and similar shows are (of course, like wrestling) not real. They use college drama class students and script the show from start to finish. Next time a "fight" happens watch the security people get up before anything actually happens. Precognisant? No, they just know when the fight is pencilled in to the script.

It's like Judge Judy, where the TV network pays any "fines" or "settlements" she imposes on the losing side - the mechanics of the show, once you know them, make the whole thing much more understandable from the participants' point of view.

More disturbing recently has been the creation of shows solely for the purpose of selling products. One of the most successful of these is Jason's favourite "The Gilmore Girls," which was commissioned by Procter & Gamble and some other multinationals so as to have a program vehicle particularly suited to a demographic they wanted to advertise to.

 

[Cliptin]

More disturbing recently has been the creation of shows solely for the purpose of selling products. One of the most successful of these is Jason's favourite "The Gilmore Girls," which was commissioned by Procter & Gamble and some other multinationals so as to have a program vehicle particularly suited to a demographic they wanted to advertise to.

Not that you're not clarvoyant but where did you get this stuff.

 

[Mercutio]

One of my now-ex-fiance's girlfriends was on Jerry Springer. She convinced her mother to become gay by having her then-girlfriend's older sister seduce her mother, and the mother came out on the show. No, I'm not making this up. This is real. I've met the girl. I've seen the show. Maybe not all of the shows are real, but that one was.

In case you think I'm kidding, understand that everything that happened in 2002 is immensely painful to me. That shit is part of the reason why.

I've also worked in the building where Jerry Springer is filmed. Never saw Jerry. Saw the bald security guy who breaks up fights once. And I saw "guests" a couple of times. They're scary, whether they're actors or not.

 

[James]

More disturbing recently has been the creation of shows solely for the purpose of selling products.

Not that you're not clarvoyant but where did you get this stuff.

The Sydney Morning Herald had an article on it over the weekend.

The Truth Is Out There, as they say. This press release includes :

"A group of advertisers, concerned about the dearth of such programs on the networks, agreed to fund development of several ideas to see if the WB could find one that would appeal to a number of age groups."

and

"She didn't know until shooting had already begun on the pilot that development of the show had been financed by some members of a group called the Family Friendly Advertising Forum. The Forum had given less than $1 million to the WB last fall, after a lunch with WB executives to ask for more programs like "7th Heaven."
[...]
"The Forum said it is quite pleased. "Gilmore Girls" has gotten positive critical word of mouth and is considered to have a good shot at success. J. Andrea Alstrup, Johnson & Johnson's corporate vice president of advertising and a key founder of the group, said she relates to it as a parent and a daughter."You're always going to have challenges raising kids. The show touches a lot of sensitive areas. I don't think we thought it was just going to be a sweet little show about a family."

and

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/45/story_4574.html

and

http://www.gilmoregirls.org/news/91.html

... Google around if you're interested.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Those shows are a waste of time. And the brains of those people that go are a waste of gray matter.

YES. TV CAN BE LAME. Let's hope we'll never experience stuff like that on the Internet.

 

[CityK]

I just saw a commercial for an upcoming movie called "Biker Boyz"... can hardly wait.

Seriously, who thinks up this crap. Another thought: how many idiots are going to end up killing themselves trying to emulate some behaviour they will see in this retardard film?

 

[jtr1962]

Seriously, who thinks up this crap. Another thought: how many idiots are going to end up killing themselves trying to emulate some behaviour they will see in this retardard film?

Blame the American public who goes and watches this garbage. If nobody watched it, they wouldn't make it. It's not our fault the average American is uneducated and has the IQ of a cabbage. On second thought, maybe it is for letting these morons procreate. Someone needs to invent a virus that makes anyone with an IQ under about 100 sterile. Within 3 generations, the problem will solve itself.

While everything on TV can't always be "educational", nor would I want it to be, there is very little in the way of pure entertainment that I find engages me. It's a shame, really. I've even had some of my own ideas for stories, but never bothered writing them down for lack of time and the fact that they likely wouldn't go over very well in our current idiot-based entertainment culture.

 

[Tea]

That, JTR, would be the best news for zimians and humans in the last 125 thousand years. Let's do the mathz, zhall we? (Forgive the odd approximation here and there, I'm just going to rough out the outline.)

(a) Currently, the US has about 250 million citizens, and accounts for 25% of the world's resource use and environmental degradation, plus about 50% of the world's military force.

(b) Now, we enact a law preventing people with an IQ of less than 100 from breeding, and wait one generation.

(c) How many fewer births is that? Well, if we assume that the birth rate is evenly distributed with rezpect to IQ (which it isn't - stupid people breed more, but we will make our figures properly conservative and ignore that), then we wind up with a population of 125 million.

(d) Actually, it takes longer than a single generation to achieve this, as all the non-breeding people, while they are not having children, are still going to live out their three score years and ten - but no matter: it's just a matter of waiting for the change in the birth rate to filter through, the actual sustained population is 125 million just the same.

(k) A caveat to the above: I'm ignoring the current base rate of population increase. No matter: that will be more than balanced out by assumption (c) above.

(e) Now we do the same again for the next generation. Take the IQ, anyone scoring less than 100 is not allowed to breed. We need to be a little bit careful here, as the intelligence profile of the population will have changed substantially: with all children being the product of the more intelligent half of the population, it is perfectly reazonable to expect that they will, on average, be smarter than the children of today, and (again on average) smarter than the remaining older people too. Luckily for my numerically-challenged brain, however, we can discount this in our calculations of the number of people allowed to breed in the second generation, for the following reasons:

(f) Intelligence is not entirely inherited, much of it is the result of social learning, not genetics. (I am an exception to the general rule: I inherited most of my intelligence from my mother in Borneo, and learned only a little from Tannin.) (And am discovering that most of that was wrong.)

(g) IQ tests, by their very nature, only test for a certain zub-zet of the skills that any particular community values. This is why, for example, IQ tests administered to black Americans "proved" that they were "less intelligent" than middle-class white Americans back in the early days of IQ testing: the tests had been developed and standardised in the American mid-west, with middle-class white subjects, and tested the sort of conceptual skills that middle-class white Americans happened to be good at, ignoring the different skills that black Americans had. After a while, the psychologists developing the IQ tests got wise to this and began working to refine their test procedures so as to more fairly reflect the actual distribution of intelligence in the community.

(h) From (g), we can reason that, although the new, smart generation would be, on average, brighter than our generation, the IQ tests would not entirely reflect this, as it's pounds to pennies that their type of intelligence would be a little different.

(i) But we can also assume that psychologists would work this out and adjust the tests such that young people would be tested on a different scale (just as men and women are tested on two different zcales today), and we can thus safely assume that the distribution of intelligence amongst them, as measured by IQ tests, would remain exactly as it is today: a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 16. (In fact we can be very sure of that, because that's what an IQ is.)

(j) Result: at the end of this generation's fertile period (roughly, from age 15 to 45), the population of the United States will stand at around 62.5 million (plus, of course, those people belonging to older generations who have not died yet, but who can be ignored for our purposes az they are non-breeding.)

(j) Onto the third and last generation of the JTP1962 project: measure IQs, discover that 50% of the population has an IQ of less than 100 once again, and hand out breeding permits accordingly.

(j) At the end of this period, the population of the United States standz at 31.25 million.

(p) From this, we can predict that the net resource consumption inflicted on the planet by the USA will have dropped from 25% to about 3%, that with such vastly lowered demand for conzumablez, the US will have long since stopped being a nett contributor to environmental degradation and in fact become the greenest country on earth, and in consequence wildly popular around the world.

(b) The last item to ponder is the big surprise. Where the US currently has the world's biggest military budget, at the end of the third generation, it will have an even bigger one. (If it wants to.) Why? Because the standard of living will be enormously higher: far higher than in any other country on the globe. This is because, with the same natural resources as at present, but with only one-eightht as many people to share them around between, the leftover productive capacity is massive. There will be more money to spare for buying F-22s (or their higher-tech replacements) than anybody knows what to do with.

(z) A bloody good idea JTR. I vote JTR for Prezident!

 

[CityK]

If memory serves my correct, Johnathan Swift (Guillivers Travels) wrote a short treatise of what to do with the troublesome Irish population....however, where memory fails me is whether or not it was written in gest or if he was down right serious.

CK

 

[Handruin]

Someone needs to invent a virus that makes anyone with an IQ under about 100 sterile. Within 3 generations, the problem will solve itself.

The HIV virus.

 

[blakerwry]

If memory serves my correct, Johnathan Swift (Guillivers Travels) wrote a short treatise of what to do with the troublesome Irish population....however, where memory fails me is whether or not it was written in gest or if he was down right serious.

CK

That was most certainly a satire meant to arouse public awareness and relate the overall importance of the problem... I rather liked that piece.

 

[jtr1962]

(z) A bloody good idea JTR. I vote JTR for Prezident!

Thankz, Tea. I'll be taking campaign contributionz via PalPal.

Now I need to think up a campaign slogan. Let's see....

"Vote JTR for a moron-free America"

I'll put this next to my picture, and also have a red circle with a slash on a picture of Beavis and Butthead(two dim-witted but hilarious cartoon characters for those not familiar).

I never quite thought of it the way you put it, but a society of 31 million high IQ people with the resources of the US would be about as close to utopia as we're going to get on this planet. Since most of the crime and other social ills are created by those of low IQ, most of the problems we're experiencing now would simply go away. It would certainly be an interesting experiment.

 

[Mercutio]

The essay was "A Modest Proposal". A particular favorite of mine.

jtr, you in part miss Tea's point. By definition, an IQ of 100 is a median IQ. 50% of any population should have an IQ below the median. If everyone in the world suddenly had an increase in intelligence, a new, fair IQ test would have to be devised to maintain that result.
IQ testing also brings up VERY interesting issues of how to properly determine intelligence. That's a really hot-button topic, especially when you get to "Rain Man" or child prodigy-types. Is "Rain Man" smarter than I am because he can multiply 10-digit numbers in his head?
Anyway, Tea is agreeing that we'd be better off decreasing the number of Americans by half over successive generations. By IQ, those Americans wouldn't be any smarter. Whether they would be in some subjective reality is a very different subject (e.g. in American High Schools, Calculus and Physics courses are now taught as a matter of course. When my father finished high school, no one took calculus or physics until college. In my high school basic chemistry class, we did four weeks of qualification schemes to determine unknowns, something that freshman taking chemistry classes at Purdue didn't do until their 2nd semester).

Er, well, that's what I get out of it, any way.

While I'm at it, on this anniversary of Roe v. Wade in the US, I'd also like to voice my agreement that there should be controls on breeding. Whether individuals want to agree with that statement or not, everyone agrees that there are too damn many people on this planet.

 

[Cliptin]

I never quite thought of it the way you put it, but a society of 31 million high IQ people with the resources of the US would be about as close to utopia as we're going to get on this planet. Since most of the crime and other social ills are created by those of low IQ, most of the problems we're experiencing now would simply go away. It would certainly be an interesting experiment.

Ah, but then we would lose other social skills like being able to tie shoes and being able to carry a lengthy conversation...outside...in public...during the daytime.