Desperate Television
An article in the Washington Post today talked about how Google and other web companies are beginning to sell online video ads, cutting into the television networks' traditional revenue source.
Television networks have outlived their usefulness and that should be apparent by the incredibly bad programming that's considered standard fare. Sure, they have popular shows like Deperate Housewives and occasionally even good shows like Arrested Development, but tune into any network show at random, and it's crap.
It's not the process, though. I've heard people argue that it's because it's hard to put decent TV on all of the time--that there's only so much creativity. But HBO is consistently good. I could name any of 5 shows on HBO that is easily as good, generally better than anything on broadcast TV. As another example, look at BBC. Isn't it interesting how every year for the last 30 years, we've taken a hit comedy in Britain and moved it over to the US airwaves (The Office, most recently)?
I think that institutions, whether they're tv or Congress, get into a rut. They scab over with hangers-ons from related industries, like conventional advertising and they start looking at their customers as marks, completely losing all respect for them as individuals.
It's time for broadcast television to reinvent themselves if they want to survive. As appalling as it often is, I suggest that they cast an eye towards reality programming. It's clearly more than just a fad, it's a trend. What broadcast TV could do well would be to integrate with other forms of media and program genuinely interactive entertainment.
Yeah. Right.
Posted on May 24, 2006
