A couple days ago I wrote somewhere on here that the only industry I could think of that didn't give a shit about their customers was strip clubs. But after watching last night's PSU-FSU game and the first half of tonight's TX-USC game I realize that I was wrong - the TV networks feel the same way about us. I used to watch a lot of TV, especially sitcoms, until laugh tracks and excessive commercials ruined them for me. I haven't watched a sitcom since Cheers went off the air. Lately my TV viewing has been pretty much limited to football. (And if I needed any reminder of why I never watch the news, last night's fiasco over the WV mining story was enough - all they care about is being first, accuracy be damned.) But between commercials and constant reviews of plays and an overly-long half-time rock concert featuring people nobody ever heard of and didn't care about (whatever happened to the schools' bands performing at half time, didn't they earn the trip too?), last night's game lasted over 5 hours and was the longest and possibly most boring game in PSU history. I stopped watching baseball years ago because it was so slow, now football has become just as bad. I doubt if I'll bother watching tonight's second half. But what puzzles me is why do big companies keep purchasing commercials on TV when nobody watches them? You'd think highly paid execs would have figured that out by now, I'm sure they never watch either. But maybe I'll watch some NFL playoffs, they don't last as long. I hope. End of vent.
AN, Talus makes a very drinkable and very inexpensive pinot noir. Should go well with your dish.
And thank God Monday night football is moving and we can finally get rid of Al Michaels - now I can turn the sound back on. Which is another thing I hate about TV - sports announcers who think we've tuned in to hear them tell stories rather than to watch the event. They must have gotten their start as scrip club dj's.
lopaw, I'm waiting for someone to offer me some good odds. Frankly I thought they looked a little flat on D the first half. Just for the record, and so my humiliation will be complete, the Skins fold, New England stomps Denver, and while I have to admit I haven't watched either Carolina or Chicago enough to know, and while I also want the Panthers to go down quick and hard, I just have a feeling...
I was flipping past a show on crop circles...don't get me started on crop circles... OK, aliens can travel interstellar distances but apparently can't find any way to communicate other than hieroglyphics in wheat fields? Or perhaps there is no better technology to navigate over the surface of the earth than depressions in the grass? Oh, wait, maybe they don't really want to be seen, but just can't stop making elaborate patterns in crops!
I think it's amusing that someone you know can actually get stressed out by watching The Learning Channel or Discovery Channel talking about a hundred ways we could die from a mile high tsunami caused by some volcanoes falling into the ocean around the Azores or the supervolcano going off under Yellowstone or an asteroid hitting in the Atlantic Ocean. All of these things could happen but what is more likely is a heart attack or some other physical ailment in another 10, 20, or 30 years or so. I'm not talking about anyone posting here. When this peson makes a comment like, "I don't know if I live far enough inland," I was wondering, is he seriously worrying about that? I hope not.
Chandler, damn straight man. What the hell happened to Bravo? They spend half their time showing "Celebrity Poker". Discovery Channel shows "American Chopper" and home re-decorating half the time. The only decent thing recently is "Mythbusters"
I think TV is on the verge of a major transformation. If you think about it, TV really hasn't changed much in the past 40 years, while almost everything else based on electronics technology has changed enormously. For example, look at the tremendous changes in computers. When I was in college, we'd spend a couple of hours punching cards, submit them to the computer center, than a few days later we'd get the results, or more commonly we'd discover that we'd made some errors in card punching and woould have to spend hours finding those errors and correct them. Things that took weeks and a large room full of equipment and a staff of people then take minutes now by one person with a lap top. But TV then was essentially the same as it is now. I have no idea what the coming changes will be, but I'd bet that 10 or so years from now TV won't be anything like it is today. And the companies that will dominate it then probably don't even exist today. Major changes almost always come from outside of an industry, because the existing leaders try to hang on to what they already have. Anyone remember Polaroid? If ever I've seen a dying industry, it's the companies that dominate today's TV.
Another reason to hate TV: Cable channels like the History Channel or A&E that may start out showing good documentaries, then descend into ever more sensational material - occult, true crime, UFOs, conspiracy theories, reality shows. And, sorry, movies that are set in the past are not what I tune in a history channel for. You would think that with scores of channels to air, they could offer one that doesn't pander.
I have been "TV-free" since 1988, and haven't yet noticed any huge blocks of free time that have not otherwise been filled up with living my life. The only caveat I would offer is that I have never been a big sports fan (actually, I have never been a sports fan). I can see how not having a TV could screw up your life if you were into sports.
I think the reason I dislike TV so much is that my parents didn't buy one until I was 7 years old and I never really got into the habit of watching it until after 9/11/01. My parents could afford one but my dad thought of life as a mini-scale Monopoly game and was preoccupied with saving his money for the next property purchase and made us do w/o whatever was unnecessary. When we did get a TV, we kept it in the garage and took it out just to watch a few hours of TV a week. Mom took us kids to the library a couple times a week and we read a lot of books.
Last night I saw 2 great movies, "Munich" and "Memoirs of a Geisha" (both directed by Steven Speilberg). I'm certain that each will be nominated for awards. I saw "The Producers" last week and it was good but of course not as good as the On Broadway performance I saw during my visit to Manhattan in July this last Summer. "Munich" is really intense and addresses terrorism like no other film I've seen.-T
FONDL: I agree, the "why" is a very important part of any story but it's never going to be done right on the nightly news. Back during the first gulf war, Peter Jennings did a series of special programs aimed at helping the public better understand the situation in the middle east - the geography, the political/religious climate and history of the region where all talked about extensively over a series of several programs. These shows ran on Saturday mornings and where directed in a large part towards helping children understand what was going on. They where very well done and I think speak to your concerns. Unfortunately this sort of programing doesn't happen neary enough with the big networks. As I said. I beleive the "why" stories are out there, people just have to look for them.
Television news ratings are dropping? This sorta proves my point. I'd love to see the programing somehow changed to be more like what you are talking about so that the numbers would go up and I'd be proven wrong. I don't think that will happen.
On a slightly different reason to hate TV I was shocked, yes shocked to find out this morning on E! TV that Lindsey Lohan has admitted to using drugs and having problems with bulimia. Shocking. A young hot overnight sensation hollywood actress has deep seated weight issues and parties too hard with the wrong crowd. In other news this morning, water wet, fire hot, Paris Hilton still a slut.
Plus the areas where underground coal mines are located such as WVa and eastern KY are rife with poverty; there aren't any other jobs available.
Yoda, I disagree. I think the "why" is an important part of any story, certainly more important than asking some poor soul who just lost her husband, "How do you feel?" That's nothing but voyeurism at it's worst and is totally disgusting. In fact that's my biggest complaint about TV news, is the use of someone's misery to provide entertainment. No story should ever tell you more than you need to know to be well informed. Anything more is entertainment, not news. And I dont agree that the public has caused this to happen; if that were true their viewing audiance size would be going up. It isn't, it's going down.
Casualguy: I'd be inclined to agree with you in a case where there where other options available. Most of the interviews I saw with miners and family's where pretty clear on the fact that they all knew it was a dangerous job but they did it because the money was good.
and on the tv news before the news came out that almost everyone was dead, I heard some guy on tv say that coal mining is in the blood. Some of these guys like coal mining so much that they would be willing to work for half the pay. It's been a family tradition and they're not about to stop. I was thinking is this guy an idiot? Cut their pay in half and they'll gripe and complain and would probably take another job somewhere else if they had the skills and/or training. I don't know too many people who are hardworkers that are willing to keep working with a 50% pay cut unless they have no choice of alternative work.
FONDL: I hate to keep defending the media here but no, that shouldn't be part of a story on the nightly news. What you are talking about is important and, though there is a place for it, the nightly recap of the day's events is not it. The information you are talking about is all out there for public consumption-Americans have just gotten too lazy to look for it. It's on the internet, it's on the Discovery Channel or PBS, it's in magazines like Scientific American and National Geographic. The fact of the matter is, if ABC news ran a 2 hour special tonight about our dependance on oil, nuclear power issues, altrnative energy sources and the long term effects of coal mining almost no one would watch it. I share your concerns but I think some of your anger is missplaced. The television industry - accept for PBS -is a private, profit driven industry. They air what people will watch. Simple as that. I can understand why you have exercised your right to turn it off but, at least in my opinion, the average American has dug his own grave where the quality of most programming is concerned.
The thing that pisses me off the most about TV news is that you only ever get one side of the story. For example, did any of the news reports point out that the reason we still rely so heavily on coal is because the environmental movement made it prohibitively expensive to build nuclear power plants ( thanks to Jane Fonda and the scare movie "Three Mile Island")? I'm not an expert on nuclear power and that may well be the best policy decision. But wouldn't it be nice if the news media would point out that the cost of not building nuclear power plants is that coal miners will continue to die in what is clearly the most dangerous occupation in the country, and that the whole Northeast will continue to experience high levels of air pollution from the Ohio Valley's coal-fired power plants? Shouldn't that be part of the story? I think Americans are among the least well informed people on the planet, thanks to our terrible TV news reporting. I never watch it anymore.
Agreed, there where correspondents waiting outside to publicize whatever news came out first-true or not. I can't imagine the hell that those poor families must have gone through that night.
Yoda, fair enough. I still put a little more responsibility on the media since they regularly tout themselves as serving the public and being professionals at newsgathering and dissemination. Once again, this does not absolve the company from responsibility for a horrific blunder.
AN: I agree and I don't think I was trying to absolve the media from any wrong doing, merely point out that the mining company knew the truth and withheld it from the media for three hours. In every issue there are two sides(sometimes 3 or 4). The truth generally lies somewhere in the middle.
Yoda, I agree that someone in the company command center should have had CNN on so that when reports started flying they could have quashed them immediately. The media is still responsible for reporting a rumor that spread like wildfire as if it were confirmed truth. I remember when the elder Bush was president and he got sick and fainted at a Japanese state dinner in the aftermath one media organization was within minutes of reporting Bush was dead based on a rumor. You make a good point, but that does not absolve the media in this case. FONDL is correct that they were more interested in being first.
I have the television on the background quite often but I seldom pay attention to what's on it anymore. I didn't watch the USC game last night but I've been hearing people rip the coverage all day today. ABC destroyed Monday night football when the broadcast became more important than the actual game. I watch reruns of Law and Order most of the time while working at my computer.
FONDL: In all fairness to the Media, I'm not sure who broke the initial story of survivors in the mine in WV but it was based on info comming from people on site. Management at the mine knew the truth within minutes of the mistake being made but kept quite for three hours. They have already admitted that it was the wrong decision.
Casualguy, I agree about the loud commercials being really annoying. Do advertisers really believe that annoying their potential customer increases sales? I have a long list of products I'll never buy because of their annoying and irresponsible commercials. And at the top of the list is Dodge. I don't understand how auto commercials get away with showing cars being driven recklessly and at excessive speeds. No one would ever thing of showing a commercial where a guy staggers out of a bar and drives away. Yet excessive speed accounts for far more auto fatalities than does drunk driving. And auto commercials encourage that behavior. I think that's incredibly irresponsible.
I used to like The X-Files for the first few seasons until it became all about alien conspiracies. Same with Twin Peaks, it was fun till it became about demonic posession and aliens.
I myself only watch sports and maybe the Sci-Fi Channel. I haven't watched regular TV since the end of the X-Files. I do watch the local news, but that's weird because they give the traffic report and the people who need it can't watch it on TV.
I'm surprised no one said anything about how fake reality shows are. It seems staged, most of the time.
I find I watch TV a lot less than I used to also. When I do it's usually a DVD (Thank god for Netflix!). I do love my Steelers football, or football in general. Hockey sometimes. Baseball is too boring on TV. Basketball? Only March Madness. I got hooked on Firefly on Sci-Fi, of course it was canceled. I'll watch about an hour of news in the evening (but I get a lot more of my news online) and have it on in the background in the kitchen when I'm cooking. The one thing that got me about the miners story was that it was similar to the one in Western PA a few years ago. At the time of the first one we all assumed they were all dead. These stories were not uncommon when I was growing up, and almost always after the first few hours passed they knew they were only going to recover bodies. That's why the PA miners story was seen as such a miracle. I had hoped that new equiptment and safety rules might have changed things and we'd see another miracle. The media went with virtually no information, they had nothing but a single rumor and no confirmation or official statement, yet they ran with it. Where are the recriminations about deception and lies? All I hear is what a tragic mistake it was, as if nobody was responsible.
There is one thing about tv that really irritates me and makes me turn on the MUTE button. The darn commercials are so much louder than the tv shows that it makes you just MUTE those suckers. Maybe that is a local tv station but I'm not sure.
It's hard to read the newspaper when the commercials start blasting away.
I believe you're in the minority about not watching tv. Of course I spend more time on the pc reading the online news for a less biased news source. I also like to go to www.abovetopsecret.com to see what spin they have on news commentaries. I have enjoyed a variety of sci-fi shows as well. This Friday my favorite series returns with new episodes. hmmm, this topic is strip club related, I think it was the great sci-fi shows on Friday night that made me stop going out to clubs on Fridays in general. I guess it all depends on what form your favorite entertainment takes. For me the Stargate Series (new episodes at least) beat out strip clubs for years. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when the series dies out. It's mainly the sci-fi shows that make tv worth watching for me.
I'm not trying to be rude or heartless but I told my mother yesterday that I thought all of the miners except one or two were dead. I said half jokingly, unless some of the older guys knew they weren't going to make it and gave their respirator or air supply to one of the younger guys so he might make it, I'm not sure how they'll survive. I was sorry to see that I was correct. Well, the last part may be my imagination since I haven't read anything about what went on. My condolences if anyone reading this knows someone affected. I blame the fiasco with someone starting a rumor based on overhearing something. It didn't change the outcome one bit but did unnecessarily stir up some strong emotions it looks like.
The other thing I don't like about some reporters and politicians on the tv news is that they don't know what they are talking about. If you know the subject better than they do, you'll understand how silly they sound.
I had a friend help me put my televisions in storage last week. It's too easy to turn it on and zone out. I was kind of addicted to the news after 9/11, but am discusted with tv now. I may take one of them out to watch the olympics. I get way too into football and my stomach gets in a knot when my team loses. I know a few ball players. It's tough when they just miss making into the play-offs.
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And thank God Monday night football is moving and we can finally get rid of Al Michaels - now I can turn the sound back on. Which is another thing I hate about TV - sports announcers who think we've tuned in to hear them tell stories rather than to watch the event. They must have gotten their start as scrip club dj's.
Last night I saw 2 great movies, "Munich" and "Memoirs of a Geisha" (both directed by Steven Speilberg). I'm certain that each will be nominated for awards. I saw "The Producers" last week and it was good but of course not as good as the On Broadway performance I saw during my visit to Manhattan in July this last Summer. "Munich" is really intense and addresses terrorism like no other film I've seen.-T
Television news ratings are dropping? This sorta proves my point. I'd love to see the programing somehow changed to be more like what you are talking about so that the numbers would go up and I'd be proven wrong. I don't think that will happen.
Yoda, I disagree. I think the "why" is an important part of any story, certainly more important than asking some poor soul who just lost her husband, "How do you feel?" That's nothing but voyeurism at it's worst and is totally disgusting. In fact that's my biggest complaint about TV news, is the use of someone's misery to provide entertainment. No story should ever tell you more than you need to know to be well informed. Anything more is entertainment, not news. And I dont agree that the public has caused this to happen; if that were true their viewing audiance size would be going up. It isn't, it's going down.
There are other situations in the world with many more lives at stake (bigger problems). Why not focus on those? Politics.
Prime time is runing a 60 minute special on the mining disaster tonight. Let's see where they go with it....
FONDL: In all fairness to the Media, I'm not sure who broke the initial story of survivors in the mine in WV but it was based on info comming from people on site. Management at the mine knew the truth within minutes of the mistake being made but kept quite for three hours. They have already admitted that it was the wrong decision.
I'm surprised no one said anything about how fake reality shows are. It seems staged, most of the time.
It's hard to read the newspaper when the commercials start blasting away.
I'm not trying to be rude or heartless but I told my mother yesterday that I thought all of the miners except one or two were dead. I said half jokingly, unless some of the older guys knew they weren't going to make it and gave their respirator or air supply to one of the younger guys so he might make it, I'm not sure how they'll survive. I was sorry to see that I was correct. Well, the last part may be my imagination since I haven't read anything about what went on. My condolences if anyone reading this knows someone affected. I blame the fiasco with someone starting a rumor based on overhearing something. It didn't change the outcome one bit but did unnecessarily stir up some strong emotions it looks like.
The other thing I don't like about some reporters and politicians on the tv news is that they don't know what they are talking about. If you know the subject better than they do, you'll understand how silly they sound.