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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Television: The runt of the cultural litter.

  
  

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Smoothly
10:08 / 26.05.04
This thread got me thinking about the low esteem in which many people seem to hold television. To the extent that at El Gato thinks that being made to
watch it for a full 24 hours will be a sadistic test of human endurance likely to send hir 'fucking bonkers very quickly'.
Now, I suspect that being made to listen to music for the same period wouldn't be deemed anything like such a Boschian prospect. Nor reading, neither. To be fair, maybe El Gato would - we don't know: he's currently
currently strapped to a chair like Alex de Large, in an experiment ze planned on the internet, for purpose of writing a newspaper article... But I do know a lot of people who will happily admit to having little interest in
watching TV at all. I know people who work in television but boast about not having a set at home. My mother insists that sometimes she looks but there's never anything good on.

I find this all a bit puzzling. Afterall, TV is by far the most popular medium, polls suggest we trust TV news more than any other source, and when we say "I heard/read somewhere that...x,y,z" we often mean we saw it on TV.
Or at least I do. But we don't respect it. I get the impression that the middle-classes in particular look down to the box; they think its news programmes are the retarded cousin of print journalism; its entertainment output a poor relation of cinema, theatre, literature, music, you name it; and radio is cooler than it's younger sister. Why?

Am I mistaken in this impression? Any thoughts?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
11:23 / 26.05.04
TV is by far the most popular medium... But... the middle-classes in particular look down to the box

Middle classes in cultural elitism shockah!!!

Seriously, it's that simple. TV is cheap and easily available = the idle sheeplike masses watch it a lot = it can't be good and worthy...
 
 
Smoothly
12:15 / 26.05.04
And that’s a pretty despicable and insulting attitude isn’t it?
I suppose I was just surprised at the general tenor of the posts in that thread. I’d expect that a thread called ‘I’m going to eat nothing but cheap factory food for a week!!! However will I cope?!!!’ would have been met with a different kind of response. I just wondered if the oohs and gasps in the TV thread were somehow more respectable.
 
 
grant
14:23 / 26.05.04
I dislike television in general not because it's popular, but because it's the ultimate embodiment of quantity-over-quality. Substance is always a secondary concern after form -- something flashy and hooky that will sell ads.

Also, there's something sneakily addictive about the medium. I used to live with a full-fledged TV addict, couldn't wake up unless the box was on, as soon as the workday was over, the box got turned on, and we'd just watch and watch and eventually coast off to sleep. And, far too often, nothing much was gained. I learned nothing, had no informative, new or even moving experiences, just a kind of warm, comfortable nothingness filling the hours from 6 to 11 pm. And then, in everyday conversation, I'd find myself quoting sit-coms without meaning to -- not only addictive, but contagiously vapid.

I don't think it's necessarily endemic to the medium; one of the great cultural treasures of the 1990s has to be Northern Exposure, which was originally criticized as a knock-off of the equally great (although less long-lived) Twin Peaks. And I still get a few TV shows on DVD from Netflix. But I haven't had cable (which means I haven't had any channels) for a good three or four years now, and couldn't be happier.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
14:25 / 26.05.04
Middle classes in cultural elitism shockah !!! Seriously it's that simple.

Well, I don't know. I think this is more of an issue to do with the " chattering " classes ( the urban, " media-literate " moneyed " elite " ) vs everyone else. I get the feeling that if you were to carry out a study of viewing habits in the suburbs or the countryside, you'd find the middle class watches just as much TV as everyone else does.

It is fairly alarming that a number of people who actually work in television openly boast about despising the thing, but it's hardly surprising when you look at what's on - At the moment, there seems to be a general ingrained inabilty on the part of the powers-that-be in television to seriously consider any progamme idea that hasn't been done to death any number of times before ( see the house-buying phenomenon for example, ) so it's no wonder that people further down the scale in terms of production get pissed off with the situation. To simply sit there and churn out the same old formulae doesn't seem like the work of a creative medium.

Don't get wrong, I love television, but as a viewer, and as in any relationship, I'm not going to respect it if I start to get the feeling, as so often of late, that it doesn't respect me. Or in fact even like me.

And twenty four hours of solid TV IS pretty tough, ST
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:00 / 26.05.04
I dislike television in general not because it's popular, but because it's the ultimate embodiment of quantity-over-quality. Substance is always a secondary concern after form -- something flashy and hooky that will sell ads.

I dunno - couldn't you say something similar about publishing? Certainly about newspapers. So is the difference that you have to pay money to read a book or read a paper that you know you won't enjoy, so you generally don't, whereas once you've paid for the TV (plus cable, license etc.) you can get bad TV as easily as good TV. Is that a factor? And, for that matter, TV is time-dependent - sit in front of it at one point and you might get Girls Gone Wild or Six Feet Under on the same channel (hypothetically, before anyone gets out their TV Guides)... so maybe that makes people feel like anyone who watches TV is settling for whatever is on at that moment... perhaps TiVo/Sky Plus/PVRs will change that...

Another thing that may change is the absence of portability of the TV. Is that a factor? That watching TV involves staying in one room, usually, whereas, for instance, radio or books can be easily carried around without altering the quality of the experience significantly. Does that make TV seem sedentary, and does that in turn evoke a class anxiety?
 
 
Yotsuba & Benjamin!
15:50 / 26.05.04
I dunno - couldn't you say something similar about publishing? Certainly about newspapers. So is the difference that you have to pay money to read a book or read a paper that you know you won't enjoy, so you generally don't, whereas once you've paid for the TV (plus cable, license etc.) you can get bad TV as easily as good TV.

Not to mention that, as filled with bad stuff as TV is (and yes, just like any other medium) it has, as of late, birthed its unique artform: the sustained film narrative, with Single-mindedly Helmed shows like Sopranos, Sorkin's tenure on The West Wing, and Buffy, et al. It's a completely new visual medium that wouldn't otherwise exist.

But yeah, I think most of TV's bum rap comes from its mass consumerist stature. It is, essentially, wrapping paper for advertising, but that doesn't completely disallow for the possibility of some really attractive and fulfilling wrapping paper to found. And you don't even really need to look that far to find it.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
17:56 / 26.05.04
Does that make TV seem sedentary, and does that in turn provoke a class anxiety ?

I'm not so sure if it's a class anxiety, more an existential one. Of all the media, there's something about television that seems to reduce the viewer to a uniquely passive state, insofar as you'll hear people talking about having watched six hours of TV the evening before, whereas anyone who was on about, say, having read six hours of book, or watched six hours of cinema, would seem a bit odd. Whether this is a cultural thing, or something intrinsic to the medium itself I don't know, but it's entirely normal to just put the thing on and take whatever it throws at you, whether or not it's of any real interest,( pretty clearly it might be, but just as easily not, ) in a way that doesn't seem to apply to any form of mass communication.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
22:34 / 26.05.04
Hmmm... but is that the action or the conversation around the action? I don't imagine that anyone here would be all that surprised at another spending six hours on a book or six hours watching films... so are we talkign about existential angst or angst that a particular kind of person doesn't block out that amount of time for books or films but does for other things, such as TV, and that that is what might be discussed the next day (although anyone who can make six hours for *anything* has the time management skills I need)?
 
 
Smoothly
23:18 / 26.05.04
You know, I'm really not sure where the common association of TV with passivity comes from. I certainly don't see why it's any more passive a medium than cinema, theatre, CDs or galleries. And even if we imagined for a moment that it were, I'm not sure why that would devalue it.

While I tend to agree with Flyboy that there is a lot of simple class snobbery about popular culture and it's modes of delivery, I think grant's view is an equally common one. Clearly it can be used for fire-gazing purposes, as can leafing through the Sunday papers, but never taking anything nourishing from it - and blaming the box for this - seems a bit like selecting a random book from Waterstones and decrying literature if it's not much cop. That people use their televisions thoughtlessly is not a failing of the medium or its content.

I hadn't really considered Haus's point about the evocations sedentariness (and thus laziness, unfitness, unsociability, loneliness etc). Might this be why the theatre and even the cinema escape a similar perception, since they involve (a) leaving one's home and (b) engaging in a communal activity?

Also, this notion that TV is tarnished by its association with the grubby business of advertising is an interesting one given that the programming on the most popular commercial channel in the UK is almost indistinguishable from it's equally popular rival which has no advertising at all.
 
 
Triplets
23:54 / 26.05.04
Well, remember, telly is a mild hypnotic which is why you get normal people plonking down for a good hour or two.

I know when I was doing a 50 hour week I used tv as a mind zapper once I got home. Instant zen.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
00:24 / 27.05.04
More the conversation round the action really. In the above example, you'd tend to ask what whoever was reading, say, or what movies they'd watched, whereas six hours of TV viewing as an evening's pastime could quite easily go by without further comment. Which seems like something that's unique to television, the way that watching it in itself can be construed as an action, without any reference to the content, necessarily.

In the case of the cinema or theatre, while you are just basically sitting there passively, you've usually all the same made an informed choice about what you're going to see, as opposed to just showing up for whatever's on offer. Plus you have left the house.

So there's an issue of control here maybe ? I've often felt like I've wasted an evening just sitting there numbly watching TV, whereas a few hours spent doing exactly the same with a couple of videos never seems quite so bad, purely I think because in the latter example I'm in charge of the process, in terms of what's being beamed out into my brain. So that could just be me, but more speaking more generally in the case of TV, there's an illusion of choice, but under that arguably an implicit invitation to surrender your will to whatever's on next, hence perhaps this vague feeling of existential anxiety about switching it on. Or something.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
08:50 / 27.05.04
More the conversation round the action really. In the above example, you'd tend to ask what whoever was reading, say, or what movies they'd watched, whereas six hours of TV viewing as an evening's pastime could quite easily go by without further comment.

But what about "water-cooler TV"? You know, the sort of TV that people talk about the next day. Precisely because TV is both popular and largely homogenous (in a sense - like, somebody in Hull will probably be watching the same thing as somebody in Kettering), you can probably do someything you can't do with books and films in the same way necessarily - although an entire office may have read Harry Potter, say, they probably won't all be at the same stage of reading it on any given day, so incentivised to discuss that point in the plot...

But yes, the fact that the spread of TV is laid out for you (hence the videos thing - you have power to choose, stop, start etc, which also means more mobility - you can get up, go out, whatever you want, without losing the narrative) might be a factor...
 
 
Ethan Hawke
12:44 / 27.05.04
TV as a medium seems to be changing rapidly. Hi-definition pictures, digital recording (TIVO) and increasingly mammoth screens are changing the way television shows are produced and consumed. Marshall McLuhan categorized TV as a "cool" medium because the fuzzy nature of the picture (as opposed to say the mechanical process of a photograph or movie) required the audience to participate more, by (unconsciously) filling in the blanks left by the low-res nature. This is probably one source of the "hypnotic" effect that people in this thread have mentioned - you're overdriving part of the brain, it seems. With the innovations I mentioned above, and shows that are shot on film (Sopranos, for instance), the nature of the television experience is radically different than it was 10, 20 years ago, to the point that it's probably not even useful to elucidate the experience by using McLuhan, from whose arguments most of the assumptions about TV are based.
 
 
PatrickMM
20:42 / 24.02.05
The primary distinction for me is between watching TV, and watching a specific show. I love TV shows, like Buffy, Sopranos, etc. and I think when used properly, it's an even better story telling medium for film. There's so much room for depth and character exploration once you're outside the constraints of the two hour feature running time.

However, there's a lot of people who just watch TV, flipping channels, and watching whatever comes on. This is the sort of crowd that your VH1 50 Hottest Hotties type show appeals to, and here, TV isn't art, it's just some really fluffy stuff that you watch. I can see why people get sucked into these types of shows, and occasionally I will myself, but I think that's the type of TV that people look down upon.

You can see it in HBO's ad campaigns, 'It's not TV, It's HBO." I would say that the HBO show is more of a genre within television than outside the medium. But, people who dismiss the medium outright are missing out on a lot of phenomenal stuff. A TV show like Alias is far better than the similar movie, Elektra.
 
 
Ganesh
20:31 / 25.04.05
Is there perhaps a vestige of the old 'leaving it to the imagination' idea? My parents were both teachers, and I remember an ongoing discussion (through the 1970s and '80s) of the role of television in development of one's imaginative facilities. There was a sense that reading and listening to music encouraged children to 'fill in the gaps' but television somehow did the work for one, and therefore wasn't as great a stimulant of creativity.

Must admit, I was reminded of this thread by this one, in which it's repeatedly suggesting that I am "overanalysing" a television programme. This is perhaps one aspect of the 'television = passive' attitude; certainly, I find myself in the position of defending "overanalysis" more often when I talk about television than any other medium.
 
 
Smoothly
22:30 / 25.04.05
You can see it in HBO's ad campaigns, 'It's not TV, It's HBO." I would say that the HBO show is more of a genre within television than outside the medium.

This is a good example of something mentioned upthread. It's particularly irritating to me that people inside the industry - often the best exponents of the medium - distance themselves from the very thing they're so well placed to champion. And they're refusing to shake the hand that feeds them.
Of course, there's lots of bad TV - there are lots of bad books, bad films, bad music, bad art etc etc. But there's a stigma about television that discourages talented people from working in it, culturally literate people from watching it, and the prophesy becomes self-fulfilling. In a way, the web share this problem. There is a perception that the internet is for perverts, inadequates and conspiracy theorists. But people who enjoy and contribute to what makes the web great are more keen to shout about it. I don't think many people here would approve the tagline 'It's not the internet, it's Barbelith'.

I think Ganesh's complaint is a neat illustration. People think it's somehow inappropriate to talk about television in the same way they would books, cinema, painting...
Films have no more gaps than television programmes; plays don't leave more to the imagination. And yet cinema and theatre are deemed respectable in a way that telly isn't. And, frankly, it's the fact that TV programmes aren't held up to the same kind of scrutiny that allows shit TV to be made. 'There's a huge hole in the premiss of Playing It Straight? Fuck it, it's only telly. No one cares'.
 
 
Dxncxn
12:50 / 26.04.05
I think that the mainstream consensus on most popular art/entertainment follows a recognisable pattern. First you get a period of moral panic, then a grudging, dismissive acceptance, and then, eventually, a recognition of cultural worth. You can see this at work for a whole bunch of artists or genres: Rock’n’Roll, the novel, Russ Meyer, video games. Obviously this isn’t going to be universally applicable, but I think it’s enough of a pattern to be interesting.

I would argue that TV is approaching this final stage - the books of essays are being published more and more frequently, and the quality of shows like The Sopranos is fairly widely acknowledged. And so, taking the pattern to its logical conclusion, in thirty or fifty years time TV will be viewed as a proper, worthwhile art form, and will be favourably compared to that nasty new [whatever] that all the future-kids are into.

Personally, I can wait. There’s fun to be had from being a fan of something which most people don’t get, or don’t take seriously. And I think there’s drawbacks to having something you love taught in colleges.
 
 
matsya
03:29 / 05.05.05
This sounds to me like confusing the form with the content. You know, all television is shit, just like all comics are retarded and all movies are dumb, kind of thing. But there's some GREAT television out there - here in Australia we've got SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) which is mostly non-US/non-UK movies and shows, plus loads of documentaries. At the moment my telly's hooked up to a bogus aerial and SBS is the only channel we can get, which is okay because it's the main one we watch.

So yeah, let's not confuse TV with Funniest Home Videos and Hard Copy would seem to be the watchword here.

m.
 
 
ibis the being
15:06 / 05.05.05
Middle classes in cultural elitism shockah!!!

Seriously, it's that simple. TV is cheap and easily available = the idle sheeplike masses watch it a lot = it can't be good and worthy...

I think it's basically that simple. A survey of my real life friends' Friendster profiles reveals that probably 90% of them profess to "hate TV." (Friendster. Ho, the irony - TV is too vapid to be beared.) And yet, inevitably, there's a "but." "But I like the Sopranos." "But I like Sex and the City." "I completely loathe TV but Conan O'Brien is brilliant."

The implicit meaning, of course, is not just that all of television is crap except for this one show that I was clever enough to enjoy, but that there's a right/intelligent way to watch TV and a wrong/stupid way, which is the way that everyone does it but me - See PatrickMM's post upthread. You'll also most likely find that people who "hate TV" also hate Britney Spears, blockbuster films, Top 40 radio stations - basically all of so-called low culture. It just happens that TV is the one medium that tends to get the "crap" label slapped over the whole of it, rather than just certain genres within it - I guess it's viewed as a genre in itself.

I really think it's just an extension of that adolescent need to define one's individuality as heavy-handedly as possible, but specifically in the area of intelligence.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
16:34 / 05.05.05
You'll also most likely find that people who " hate TV " also hate Britney Spears, Blockbuster films, Top 40 radio stations - basically all of so-called low culture.

If I knew I could get away with it, I'd happily 'deal with' everyone responsible for the above with a Ronald McDonald look in my eyes.

I don't think that'd make me a 'bad person,' either.
 
 
RadJose
22:38 / 05.05.05
It's rather obvious why people who work in television don't watch much of it isn't there? We spend 40hrs a week w/ all that, we can't be bothered to spend much of our free time with it. It's like taking your work home with you. You may get to watch what you enjoy rather than what the station you work at airs, but still, you need a break!
 
 
rakehell
05:24 / 06.05.05
I don't have a great deal of time to reply unfortunately, but I think that it's important to note that network or commercial television is a different beast from cable.

Commercial television's primary interest is in advertising and thus gaining maximum exposure for the product. So nothing to challenging or offensive; broadest appeal to the most viewers. Cable TV has a different profit model and in fact it may be in the channels best interest to produce or syndicate challenging and thought provoking shows.

I'm wondering how much of the attitude towards television is by older people and what kids raised on cable and TiVo would make of the whole thing.
 
 
Jack Vincennes
10:29 / 06.05.05
I don't imagine that anyone here would be all that surprised at another spending six hours on a book or six hours watching films...

I'm not sure -I probably would be surprised by someone spending six hours entirely absorbed in any such task. This might be more a comment on my concentration span, but whenever I spend more than three hours watching a film (or possibly reading a book, but that's not happened since uni) I have just the same vaguely-out-of-it, disconnected feeling I get when I watch a similar amount of much TV. So could it be to do with the fact that TV is cheap and easily available -so people are more able to watch for that long, therefore more likely to and more likely to associate the disconnected feeling I and I assume others get from too much of any kind of media with too much TV?
 
 
Smoothly
14:35 / 06.05.05
It just happens that TV is the one medium that tends to get the "crap" label slapped over the whole of it, rather than just certain genres within it - I guess it's viewed as a genre in itself. - ibis

Yeah, this is odd isn't it. Particularly when so many people *like* TV and watch it a lot. There's seems to be some odd doublethink going on. Survey people (in the UK at least) and they'll tell you that they trust TV news more than any other source. Most people know what they know about current affairs from the television but that aspect doesn't seem to be bound up in its image. People will often say 'Did you read about...?' when they didn't read about it.

You'll also most likely find that people who "hate TV" also hate Britney Spears, blockbuster films, Top 40 radio stations - basically all of so-called low culture.

Absolutely. And they *won't* say they hate music or cinema. It's almost as if they hate the *medium* in spite of the content. Is it that we hate TVs rather than TV?


RadJose - Do you know anyone who works in publishing who doesn't read books in their spare time? Know any journalists who don't read the papers? Any one on the film industry who doesn't go to the cinema otside working hours? How many musicians don't listen to music?


Commercial television's primary interest is in advertising and thus gaining maximum exposure for the product. So nothing to challenging or offensive; broadest appeal to the most viewers. - rakehell

I don't know how true this is in the Australia (does the ABC look a lot different from the large commercial channels?), but in the UK, Channel 4 - which is part funded by advertising - is probably the most challenging and offensive broadcaster. The BBC is arguably more innocuous than its commercial rival ITV1.

I'm wondering how much of the attitude towards television is by older people and what kids raised on cable and TiVo would make of the whole thing.

This is a really interesting area, I think. I do think that the trend away from watching TV programmes on-air might change the perception of it. Look at how popular TV DVDs are. Watching a movie on DVD and watching a TV drama on a disk or off a PVR should begin to feel pretty much indistinguishable. Which makes me wonder whether this is a push v pull thing. Is it that we don't like being dictated to when we watch a programme? Is it the serial nature of TV broadcast? Does it feel manipulative or dictatorial? The perception of radio doesn't seem suffer in the same way, but maybe it is a factor.


Vincennes - you might be surprised by someone spending six hours absorbed by any medium, but would you *attitude* to someone who did be nuanced by the medium that they managed to get so absorbed by? You might be different, but I suspect that more often than not, someone who spent six hours watching telly would elicit more sneers than someone emerging from the latest production of Tristan und Isolde. (Stoatie's boss notwithstanding, I gather)


TV is cheap and easily available

This might be true in comparison to opera, but not other thigns with an equally elevated status. Newspapers are *proverbially* cheap and commonplace.
 
 
PatrickMM
18:28 / 06.05.05
The thing about TV is it encompasses a much broader range of content than films or novels. So, saying I like TV is not synonymous with liking novels, it's more synonymous with liking all printed material from Moby Dick to The National Enquirer.

So, since there's such a broad range of stuff in the medium, I feel like it's appropriate that people qualify their answer if asked if they like TV, because the medium does offer so many different things. I love TV as a storytelling medium, and have spent a huge amount of time watching serial TV dramas, but I'm not such a fan of a lot of the other kinds of programming.

Though I will agree that a lot of people take such pride in saying they never watch TV, and if you're doing that, you're missing out on a lot of good stuff.
 
 
Smoothly
00:29 / 07.05.05
The thing about TV is it encompasses a much broader range of content than films or novels. So, saying I like TV is not synonymous with liking novels, it's more synonymous with liking all printed material from Moby Dick to The National Enquirer.

I think that's probably right. And what would you make of someone who said, "Print? Ughh. Get it away. I won't have print in my house."?
 
 
RadJose
19:03 / 08.05.05
Dear Smoothly.
Do you know anyone who works in publishing who doesn't read books in their spare time?

I used to live with an editor, she liked books but couldn't stand magazines, that's my only insite on that.

Know any journalists who don't read the papers? Any one on the film industry who doesn't go to the cinema otside working hours?

I don't know any journalists or people in the film industry.

How many musicians don't listen to music?

Tricky question. I know several musicians that could care less about new music, music made in the past few years, or what's hot now. They all seem to get into the older more "classic" stuff in thier opinion. The only current acts they usually seem to listen to are the ones they either tour with or meet on tour.

But i wasn't really speaking for them. I work in television and i have for the last 5yrs. I was speaking of that. Personal experience, sheding insite on why people who work in television may boast that they don't even own a television, as mentioned in this thread.
 
 
Smoothly
19:59 / 08.05.05
[ot]sheding insite? clueless_joe, is that you?[/ot]

I appreciate the benefit of your personal experience, RadJose, but I don't see that it offers much insight into why people who work in TV boast that they don't even own a television. Your busman's holiday explanation doesn't really get us anywhere on that, does it?
Those questions were rhetorical, designed to point to the special status TV has among the arts - ie. the status of bug-eyed back-stairs bastard. Something which your case studies seem to bear out. Not owning a TV isn't like eschewing chart music, it's like not owning any speakers.
 
 
diz
22:03 / 08.05.05
Well, I don't know. I think this is more of an issue to do with the " chattering " classes ( the urban, " media-literate " moneyed " elite " ) vs everyone else.

i don't know how anyone could claim to be "media-literate" and not watch TV, seeing as how it's the single most popular medium.

---

it may be worth pointing out that there are some significant differences between TV and its nearest cousin, film, which affect the structure of the content.

the biggest, i think, is the difference in audience choice. once you pay for your ticket, you're pretty much stuck watching the movie. you can get up and leave, and you may or may not get your money back, but you're not going to be able to channel surf. movies are also tightly scheduled, and as a result you don't get a lot of people wandering in halfway through, and they're also variable in length (within certain outer limits for commercial films, of course - at least 90 minutes and seldom more than 180). as a result, movies are able to set their own pace and presume that the audience will follow along.

TV does not have any of those luxuries. any TV viewer can switch channels at any moment, and so it's crucial that TV retains your attention every single moment. people watching the show could get bored at any moment, and people flipping through won't stop unless they see something that grabs their interest within two or three seconds, tops. you also have to make sure that people are interested enough while the show is on to come back at the end of the commercial break. this probably biases the whole medium towards content that some might be inclined to characterize as cheap, sensationalistic, pandering, shallow - you name it.

TV also has to work within very strict time guidelines. shows which aren't either 30 minutes or 60 minutes (minus commercials) don't fit neatly into little scheduling grids and are essentially impossible. additionally, TV shows must develop long relationships with a large audience over a long period of time (multiple years) in order to be successful, whereas movies have, at most, a few months they need to keep people interested. these constraints, especially combined with the attention-keeping factor above, necessarily lead to things being repetitive and formulaic. predictability is key to long-term success if you need to get people into the habit of sitting down every Thursday night between 8:00 and 8:30 in order to be successful, whereas movies have the luxury of being able to succeed on the basis of people's momentary whims. predictability is also pretty much inevitable when you have a number of shows all working on the same time structure (short intro, credits, commercial break, X number of minutes, commercial break, etc), you're going to end up with very similar sorts of comedy and drama with pretty much identical senses of timing and plot structures used over and over again.

also, obviously, in order to be on the air in a recognizable form over the course of many years, and to be able to develop stars and amortize the cost of set construction over those years, life-changing events have to be few and far between. you have to have a regular cast that's recognizable week after week for at least four or five years, they pretty much have to live and work in the same place over that time period, and as a result you have to basically reset things to the status quo at the end of every show.

you also have to have a broad audience from a variety of backgrounds watching your show regularly, you're under tighter constraints as far as government censorship goes, and you're entirely dependent on a bunch of fickle advertisers who you can't risk pissing off. as a result, you've got to be very careful not to potentially offend anyone, and so you have to either play it really safe or be incredibly subtle.

given all those constraints inherent to the medium, it's a wonder that anything remotely watchable comes out of the process at all. however, despite those limitations, there's all kinds of good stuff on all the time, moreso now with the proliferation of specialized niche-marketed networks than at any point in the history of the medium. it's crap for news, because the medium is sort of inevitably driven towards cheap sensationalism and total cowardice with regard to powerful interests who buy advertising, but in terms of entertainment programming it's amazing how much good stuff gets on the air, and how often, especially considering all the hurdles any TV show has to clear.
 
 
PatrickMM
04:10 / 09.05.05
I would say that TV and mainstream comics have a lot of the same restrictions, the need to fit in to a certain space, the need to put up with advertising, and the same sort of endless serialization that leads to character loops instead of real growth.

I think the biggest question for a TV show, and comic for that matter, is whether it is a story with an end in sight, and overall arcs guiding it there. A show like Buffy or The Sopranos always seemed to be going somewhere, the characters change, the plot develops, and there's no sense of stagnation. That's what distinguishes the best of TV from stuff like The OC which, while a highly entertaining show, doesn't seem to really be going anywhere. They play out the same character conflicts over and over again, and there's no real growth.

Another problem is a show like Alias or The X-Files, where there's always something earth shattering happening, but events just happen, there's no progress towards an endpoint. Creators really need to go into the series with a vision of where it's going, and keep evolving the characters. Now, this can be problematic, because it has to be painful to come up with a five year plan for where things are going and then get cancelled, unable to finish your story, but I think it's worth it, and a better choice that getting screwed later when the series is just going through the motions.

TV has a much greater potential than film to produce amazing works because of the sheer depth and evolution that can happen along the way, it's just as Diz said, producers come up with all kinds of ways to keep a status quo rather than move things forward. Ultimately, creators need to be willing to end a series at the right time, when the story is done.
 
 
Smoothly
09:04 / 09.05.05
This is interesting. Diz's description, and the comparison Patrick makes with comics, might be pretty instructive because comics face a similar stigma, don't they? They're seen as being accessible, disposable, inconsequential, lightweight, vaguely corrupting, infantile, low-cult lit-lite. So I wonder if, similarly, TV is looked down upon because it's perceived as being, you know, fer kids.
It is, after all, the first cultural medium we adopt as our own, and often at a very young age. And it's probably one of the few recreational activities you engaged in as an infant that you still engage in as an adult. Does our contempt derive from a feeling that it's something we should have grown out of?
 
 
ibis the being
20:45 / 09.05.05
Does our contempt derive from a feeling that it's something we should have grown out of?

Funny, I was just thinking along those lines today at work. Specifically I was thinking that "our" (roughly - say 25-35 age group) generation was the first to have TV as babysitter, and the widespread disdain for TV among us might have to do with a backlash against our erstwhile electronic nanny. Maybe it is seen as infantile, as you say Smoothly, and I also think a lot of people have convinced themselves that they are unable to consume television with the autonomy and selectivity that they consume other media.

I hear a lot of people use the phrase "sucked in" in reference to TV watching, as though it's somehow dominant over human thought and choice. (By comparison, when you hear someone say they were "sucked into" a book it's usually a positive thing, ie the book was that good.) I also see a lot of people having an all-or-nothing attitude towards it, as though merely having a television in the house means you're going to have to watch it 10 hrs a day against your will... the only way to avoid addiction is to get it out of the house.

Maybe a lot of those people were "raised by television" as kids - their parents plunked them in front of the TV to soothe, pacify, and entertain them, and the association with TV now is still one of overdependence? Here, lie down on zis couch, ve vill discuss ze television as fah-zer figure....
 
 
diz
03:57 / 11.05.05
TV has a much greater potential than film to produce amazing works because of the sheer depth and evolution that can happen along the way, it's just as Diz said, producers come up with all kinds of ways to keep a status quo rather than move things forward.

actually, my whole point was that it's not really the fault of individual producers, but rather an inherent structural limitation of the medium as it exists now. shows can only work if they exist within certain parameters, and it's just the brutal reality of the marketplace, rather than lack of vision or creativity on anyone's part, that limits the range of expression.
 
 
ibis the being
20:03 / 18.05.05
There was a show on the local public radio station today about the idea that watching TV actually makes you smarter, featuring Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good for You. He argues that television's got a bad reputation in part because older shows were stupid and simplistic, but TV shows today feature complex plots and character development that exercise the mind. You can listen to the show online at The Connection.
 
  

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