A golden occasion to kill your TV
The writer’s strike has a periodic orbit ¼ of the time of Haley’s Comet. Any method of shortening this cycle to 10 years, brings hope of a respite from horrible programming, insipid sitcoms and tedious talk shows.
A 24/7 Dr. Phil show is representative of current fare.
Strike set to silence talk shows
Strike set to silence talk shows
The last such action, in 1988, disrupted the autumn television season. [snip]
Hollywood Set for Last-Ditch Labor Talks
LOS ANGELES (AP) - A federal mediator was scheduled to meet with Hollywood writers and studio representatives at an undisclosed neutral location Sunday in a last-ditch effort to prevent a strike. [snip]
The union said it would stage its first pickets in New York and Los Angeles. [snip]
Start with Peoria given they might exhibit greater fervor over the strike.
Daytime TV, including live talk shows such as “The View” and soap operas, which typically tape about a week’s worth of shows in advance, would be next to feel the impact.
The strike would not immediately affect production of movies or prime-time TV programs. Most studios have stockpiled dozens of movie scripts, and TV shows have enough scripts or completed shows in hand to last until early next year.
Daytime TV cannot die fast enough. Putting the soaps and the “View” out of misery will save the upcoming generation from intellectual and cultural cleansing.
If the strike lasts long enough, viewers might even get a “Clockwork Orange” cure of reality TV.
Put up a test pattern; some talking head will have a show arguing over whether it is art or trash.
Archived in: HollywoodNovember 4, 2007 at 3:49 pm | Trackback
9 comments
Remember when Newton Minnow (some name. Nerd squared) of the FCC called TV a “vast wasteland”? It was fifty years ago, when we had Playhouse 90, Twilight Zone, some decent Westerns, Lux Video Theatre, and a few others. There were some ensemble series, too.
It wasn’t all that bad, but along came “Pay TV”, the solution to the witless crap (The Righteous Apples) on the broadcast channels. Now Pay TV is Cable, and it’s sixty channels of witless crap rather than three. TCM is great, as long as they’re running something with Myrna Loy in it, though.
But as for ABC, NBC and CBS writers? I’ve scraped smarter organisms from my bathroom drains. Watching any of it is like dying, going to hell, and coming back as a “Cops” cameraman with eternal Dade County trailer park duty.
Crap like this on TV is one of the reasons i got rid of mine. I don’t think I will even own another one again.
ok now is the right time to use the word “ascetic.”
I watch between 5 and 6 hours of TV a week, Local news at 6 and Nightly Business Report (NBR) at 6:30. At 7 the tube is turned off. I’m too old and losing brain cells to fast to have the process accelerated by bad TV.
Saturday has some cooking shows on PBS which are worth watching. That might increase the tube time a bit.
I admit to being hooked on “The Sopranos” now that it’s on A & E. I’ve had to eat some crow about it, too. It’s so…northeast.
Yup, no TV is ascetic. But Emoticons? Heh. Art for the masses.
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Hmmm. Andrew Sullivan is the Vermont Woodchuck? Interesting.
Who’s this Andrew Sullivan?…
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