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Is There Too Much New Programming On TV?
HughPickens.com writes: John Koblin writes in the NY Times that there's a crisis in television programming felt among executives, viewers and critics, and it's the result of one thing: There is simply too much on television. John Landgraf, chief executive of FX Networks, reported at the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour that the total number of original scripted series on TV in 2014 was 371. The total will surpass 400 in 2015. The glut, according to Landgraf, has presented "a huge challenge in finding compelling original stories and the level of talent needed to sustain those stories."
Michael Lombardo, president of programming at HBO, says it is harder than ever to build an audience for a show when viewers are confronted with so many choices and might click away at any moment. "I hear it all the time," says Lombardo. "People going, 'I can't commit to another show, and I don't have the time to emotionally commit to another show.' I hear that, and I'm aware of it, and I get it." Another complication is that shows not only compete against one another, but also against old series that live on in the archives of Amazon, Hulu or Netflix. So a new season of "Scandal," for example, is also competing against old series like "The Wire." "The amount of competition is just literally insane," says Landgraf.
Others point out that the explosion in programming has created more opportunity for shows with diverse casts and topics, such as "Jane the Virgin," "Transparent" and "Orange Is the New Black." Marti Noxon, the showrunner for Lifetime's "UnREAL" and Bravo's "Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce," says there has been a "sea change" in the last five years. "I couldn't have gotten those two shows on TV five years ago," says Noxon. "There was not enough opportunity for voices that speak to a smaller audience. Now many of these places are looking to reach some people — not all the people. That's opened up a tremendous opportunity for women and other people that have been left out of the conversation."
Michael Lombardo, president of programming at HBO, says it is harder than ever to build an audience for a show when viewers are confronted with so many choices and might click away at any moment. "I hear it all the time," says Lombardo. "People going, 'I can't commit to another show, and I don't have the time to emotionally commit to another show.' I hear that, and I'm aware of it, and I get it." Another complication is that shows not only compete against one another, but also against old series that live on in the archives of Amazon, Hulu or Netflix. So a new season of "Scandal," for example, is also competing against old series like "The Wire." "The amount of competition is just literally insane," says Landgraf.
Others point out that the explosion in programming has created more opportunity for shows with diverse casts and topics, such as "Jane the Virgin," "Transparent" and "Orange Is the New Black." Marti Noxon, the showrunner for Lifetime's "UnREAL" and Bravo's "Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce," says there has been a "sea change" in the last five years. "I couldn't have gotten those two shows on TV five years ago," says Noxon. "There was not enough opportunity for voices that speak to a smaller audience. Now many of these places are looking to reach some people — not all the people. That's opened up a tremendous opportunity for women and other people that have been left out of the conversation."
Until people start asking for new ones?
Apparently "Jane the virgin" is actually a remake of a 2002 tv show, so it looks like somebody _did_ manage to get that show on TV more than five years ago.
Quantity has a quality all of its own.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"The amount of competition is just literally insane," says Landgraf.
Then you should commit yourself to a sanitorium, mr. Landgraf.
"Literally" does not mean "very much like".
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Just donate some new scripts the Hollywood industries, they're plagued with sequels, reboots and lame, reworked, versions of anything that came out before 1986.
... and then it's dropped after 1st or 2nd season. Yet piece of shit shows like 'lost' go on for a decade. Fuck this shit. Fuck you executives.
Remember Lost? The show where they would start with some interesting subplot, only to never revisit it in subsequent episodes? They just went on to some newer subplot.
That's what I feel about new TV shows. If I give in to the show and start watching regularly, I must know that they're going to treat me well. But doing that kind of crap is boring as fuck for writers (evidently) because they hate it and only want to start with a blank slate every episode. I've been burned too many times. Now, they have THE NERVE to complain that viewers won't engage? God damn, it's your own fucking fault, people.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Just donate some new scripts the Hollywood industries, they're plagued with sequels, reboots and lame, reworked, versions of anything that came out before 1986.
No no no. The time when movies were better than what is on tv is over.
Hollywood can sink for all I care (reboots of superhero movies, explosions, remakes of reboots of superhero movies, more explosions and so on. That's the only fucking thing they now how to do nowadays). Good riddance to those fuckers. Good programming on tv is the way to go forward.
I cut the cord a year ago. Didn't bother with Amazon, Netflix or Hulu. I listen mostly to the radio these days.
"Fix it? It has been disintegrated, by definition it cannot be fixed!" - Gru in Despicable Me.
What a time waster. I know I am not alone either
http://saveie6.com/
Of course, when I read the title of your post, I thought of Bash, Perl and Python scripts. Maybe somebody can write a Python script, that writes better TV scripts than TV script writers?
The most amusing TV show that I ever watched, was a cable "local access" program in Austin, Texas. It was titled "Guns of the Trailer Parks". It featured such things as bayonets for tactical shotguns. One quote was "Lots of folks like to have a bayonet on their shotguns!" In case this whooshed you, it was in no way serious.
I guess if you run out of ammunition while hunting a bear . . . you can engage in "hand-to-paw combat" with it.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
... why does the article assume it's worth going anywhere near any TV programming?
Crap got replaced by different crap, and life is too short to waste time on it. End of story.
"That's opened up a tremendous opportunity for women and other people that have been left out of the conversation."
Oh bullshit. Scripted TV is almost entirely for women. Shows are built around relationships and families, with men almost always a negative in some way (dumb, lazy, fat...) And it's hilarious when a man gets kicked in the balls, but if a woman gets hit in any way, shit hits the fan.
Minus sports and some action programmes, most of TV is female orientated.
already discussed this on the red site
Hilarious
Network producers think there's "too much on television" and people think "there's nothing to watch on television". Who is right? Well, how about we look at the rising trend of people cancelling their cable subscriptions.
Bullshit, there's another, more serious issue
There's not enough reason to commit to shows on american television because they're highly prone to cancellation. Why should I commit to a show if the network won't? I've seen too many shows run on for a long time (gotta milk that cash cow until it dies, apparently) and then get cancelled before concluding.
This damages the viewers' trust in future shows. Nobody wants to commit to anything because it's almost guaranteed to die instead of finish. What percentage of american television shows reach their conclusion? 1%? 3%? There's no reason to take the risk.
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world...
Interpretation
Here's the interpretation you should take away from this: ...and it's HARD!"
"We have lost all negotiating power since all these show creators can take their show so many other places. We can't resurrect old crap anymore for guaranteed income, but we're not risky enough to bet on new material. We even tried to lock as much content behind paywalls, but people just stop watching our stuff instead of paying us again to watch it any other way than when it airs. We actually have to do the job we've been claiming to do since cable was conceived.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
With so many new shows each year, I have trouble deciding what to watch. My time is limited so I can't watch even a few minutes of every one of them. I have to go by the previews, reviews, and advice of friends. By the time I find one I want to watch, they've cancelled it or keep moving it around on the schedule making it hard to find. The premium channels seem to do a better job of promoting and scheduling, and most of the better shows lately have been on them.
My solution is to just wait and catch a whole series on Netflix or Amazon Prime. It may be a year or more after the series has ended, but if it's good, I don't care.
Oh, and while there may be a ton of new shows, there are only a few good one. Most are pure crap.
I'm pretty sure there are a lot more books published each year than TV shows, and yet it seems this does not pose a problem for writers.
X-Files (non-bounty hunter shows) 1993
Slashdot, the Series (pre-DICE) 1997
Family Guy (pre-HD shows) 1999
Dead Like Me (classic) 2003
Then I drove my Chevy to the levy . . . singing bye-bye Miss American Pie. When prime time started fucking, and dialogue include shit and balls, that was the end.
Around here (Australia) there is bugger all new "real TV" coming out now days.
Ever stop to think
So is he saying there are 400 scripted SERIES, i.e. about 4800 *shows* at 20 shows a series??
Compare that to movies:
IMDB 2014 there are 9080 Movies made in 2014....
http://www.imdb.com/search/title?year=2014,2014&title_type=feature&sort=moviemeter,asc
Twice as many movies made each year as TV shows. So there is a long way to go.
In terms of Android apps there were probably another half million app added last year. Just as the 3000th fart app is ignored, so is the 3000th clone of Friends or the 3000th movie about zombies.
Too bad most of the good stuff gets canceled just as its getting interesting while garbage like Survivor gets 31 seasons of the same boring unwatchable crap.
At least the new season of Scorpion starts in a few weeks and the new seasons of Madam Secretary and CSI: Cyber in a few weeks after that. So there ARE still good TV shows out there but they are few and far between (and mostly on expensive-to-purchase cable channels e.g. Halt & Catch Fire on AMC)
This kind of statement reminds me of Catholic church every Sunday as a child. You don't really believe it, you don't think about it, but you know you're just supposed to mumble these words when you get to this point in the ceremony. How in the world could anyone believe women have been "left out of the conversation"? Does this man actually own a television?
I'm hoping that in this ocean of excrement a few decent shows might sneak by and float to the top, and some do, but not enough for me to have one to watch every day of the week.
Netflix and HBO certainly manage to do it consistently.
Maybe the execs should stop greenlighting the same trope-ridden bullshit stuck together with minimal effort writing they think is sufficient to hold a semi-coherent narrative.
If all you're producing is the entertainment equivalent of white noise, even the lowest common denominator you're targeting is not going to stick with it because it's interchangeable with the white noise everyone else is producing.
set awash in an ocean of petroleum related products,,, no surprise,, with more intricate parts than a space shuttle & on the fly dna upgrades momkind has certainly created us in her own image,,, softer gentler leanings of tears innocence mercy honesty,, newclear options... cease fire,, stand down,, wipe off that frown,, there's moms & babys in all of our towns...
Firefly: loved. Dropped at ep. 13 or so. Zero closure (from the network. Kudos on cast and others for the attempt with the movie, but... 2 hours of movie cannot replace many hours of series.) Poster child for network insanity, lack of foresight driven by must-profit-this-quarter-or-shareholders-will-riot.
Homeland: the season "finale"? Nothing. Not a damn thing worth airing. And the drivel-infested baby-angst... omg, switch it off. Bad enough its basically cop-porn, federal-style, unlimited excuses for "What constitution? Constitution? Isn't that something to do with whether I catch cold or not?" but I have to have baby angst inflicted on me? It's no wonder these series die on the vine when the shows grievously lose focus like that.
Speaking of baby angst, Sons of Anarchy: An entire inane SEASON of baby-angst. Hollywood: When I want "soul searching humanity" in my drug-dealing, weapons-smuggling, murdering, underhanded, principle-free smorgasbord of evil gangland bottom-feeders, I'll let you know, mkay? Don't hold your breath on that one, either. They would have lost me over that baby-kidnap nonsense if it wasn't for Crazy-Pants McGillicuddy, AKA Tig Trager. He was constantly saving episodes. Best-written character on the series by leaps and bounds.
Mostly-consistent entertainment: Deadwood, Game of Thrones, Vikings, Ray Donovan, House of Cards, and (surprisingly) Daredevil.
There may be a lot of new shows, but there sure aren't a lot of good new shows. I'm not having any trouble at all trying to choose what to watch. I'm having trouble finding anything worth watching, and if I do find such a thing, they'll probably cancel it anyway.
Then there's the abject cop porn. Talk about appealing to the lowest common denominator. Total bottom-feeder trash. But at least there's a huge audience for it. We can't all manage to keep the drool off our faces. That's exactly what keeps Fox News on the air and Trump in the running — the huge number of utter idiots in the general population. I can't think of a single cop show where a major theme wasn't the show trying to make excuses for absolutely inexcusable behavior by the cops. I mean, okay, if the show is *about* inexcusable behavior, alright then. But when the "hero" is off the reservation and they play that up as a good thing, that's just destructive to every reasonable and sane point of view there is. Awful stuff. I''m not talking about antiheroes either. When a show about a cop is clearly holding cops up as "the good guys", and they can't be bothered with little things like people's actual rights, as if their correct role was legislator, judge and jury all rolled into one, I just turn the show off.
My only real problem with TV is finding anything worth watching. I get that stranger in a strange land feeling more often than not, and sadly, it doesn't come staffed with a libertarian, open-minded genius, super mental powers, and telepathic aliens. Just a vague urge to go do the hermit thing in a cave.
Isn't that a problem with ALL types of TV, for example US documentaries all seem to fall into the "follow the formula" structure.
I watched "Tiny House Nation", a series about people who move into tiny houses. The format is 1. Person wants to downsize, 2. Person has too much stuff, 3. Person needs to get real about this, 4. Person shown how much stuff they have, 5. Person downsizes, 6. Happy ending
When they have only a small amount of stuff, they still do step 3 and simply pretend its a lot.
And nobody is ever unhappy at the end, the format calls for a happy ending so a happy ending on every episode.
After you've watched 3 episodes, you get the format and stop watching BECAUSE EVERY EPISODE WILL BE THE SAME.
Then after you've watched a few shows/series on that channel, like Extreme RVs, you realize that the whole channel is like that, that its all 1. Person wants, 2. Person needs to get real, 3. Person gets real, 4. Happy ending.
"Bob wants an RV like no other..", "Jeff at RVHut wonders how they will make such an impossible thing", "RV is made", "Bob is really excited about his RV".
And then you stop watching the whole channel because its all full of this fixed format shit and you realize that you can predict the whole series from the intro to a single episode.
You can tell because there is so much of it.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
"That's opened up a tremendous opportunity for women and other people that have been left out of the conversation"
Bad grammar aside, I'm surprised someone thinks there's a diversity problem on TV. It overcompensated back in the 70's and never returned.
The reason TV watching is on the decline is because the programming sucks and there are too many commercials. Playing a laugh track between every spoken line does not make stupid dialog funny.
Copyright inflates the apparent demand for goods, Thus people enter into the supply side too much and the correct demand is lower, resulting in oversupply.
I don't know... I barely watch regular tv anymore, but I've never once said 'I can't commit to another show, and I don't have the time to emotionally commit to another show.'. What I usually say is 'There is to much crap I have no interest in on tv', which includes lots of shows with interesting premises that never go anywhere. When I do find a show I like I'm lucky to get 13 episodes before they go on hiatus and run the risk of never being seen again because the metrics say it's not 'popular enough'. As has already been mentioned Firefly falls on this list, but plenty of others do as well. Networks are inherently fickle and wouldn't recognize good tv if it was used to hit them over the head. Thank god they are becoming less and less needed to handle entertainment.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
I was watching several series for a few years, and new ones kept coming up, and I got bogged down. Missed a few episodes, then decided to wait until I could just watch the entire season at once, to catch up, but then fell behind in several more series. Then you would have some series take several breaks, and I wouldn't know when to start watching again. Then you get filler episodes that don't matter, and don't interest me enough to catch up on them. Then add to that the aforementioned fact that a lot of shows I enjoyed got cancelled after I invested time into them (Sarah Connor Chronicles was a huge blow to my enjoyment of TV), and I just stopped caring. I mostly game, exercise, or watch movies or the Marvel shows, on Netflix. I'll watch some occasional cartoons (Family Guy, Simpsons, Archer, etc), that doesn't require too much knowledge of previous shows, but I can't invest time in like 10 different series, that require me to watch each and every week.
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
Maybe somebody can write a Python script, that writes better TV scripts than TV script writers?
Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin did that already in the late 1960s.
One of the major problems with TV programs, is that they are made for people who buy "As Seen On TV" crap. I wonder if TV executives use a algorithm that matches the script to viewers + ability to purchase + likely to watch + likely to purchase?
Passionately Indifferent
Go see what it took in the old days to produce a TV show. The capital investment in cameras, editing equipment, lights, sound systems, etc was HUGE. You needed a large audience to make the economics work.
Today you can produce a decent quality show with a couple thousand dollars in equipment. So you can make money with a very small audience and you can have much more diverse subjects where as before when you had a huge audience you needed to appeal to everyone. There is nothing wrong with so many shows. The market is great at figuring out how many shows are needed.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
One of the things I've noticed is that there's a huge glut of "original content" from Netflix, Amazon, Yahoo and other unlikely sources. As far as I can tell, this is a direct consequence of the latest tech bubble. Companies promoting tablet ecosystems or subscription services are increasingly in the TV production business as well. I kind of understand Netflix producing its own content, but Amazon?? Other than promoting Prime subscriptions, what possible economic sense does that make outside of bubble-land? I guess these companies see everyone else doing it and feel they need to be doing it also.
I guess my feeling on this is that it's not just other TV content competing for people's attention. I have a job and 2 little kids -- these things, plus maintaining the household take up pretty much any time I would spend watching new TV shows. Because of this, something has to be really good for me to invest the time to watch it. Even people who watch "normal" amounts of TV are too distracted by a billion other things to commit to a new show. The landscape has shifted -- it's not the 1970s anymore where the entire population was watching hours of prime time TV every night of the week from three content providers. Now it's Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, YouTube, the Internet at large, and other things competing for attention.
That's insane.
http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/i...
They are the number 1 Demographic after general population. Almost all daytime television is aimed at them and most evening television.
At the root of this is the notion that television is entertainment that is separate from life. It has always been an empty paradigm, and for decades thoughtful and ambitious people have avoided that kind of television. But while we were stuck with a broadcast model, it was the only option that could attract a large enough audience at a specific time to work economically. Now, with content on demand, it is possible for television content to be selected so that it is much more useful and relevant to people's lives. So that Kids programming can be chosen to match the developmental stage and educational goals for a child at a specific time. And dramas can be chosen to match the interests and psychology of a viewer. What we haven't yet figured out how to do is how to produce quality programming at the high volumes this model requires and we also haven't yet figured out how to index the content to allow new content to connect effectively with viewers. We are still stuck with a ratings system that is based on the old broadcast model rather than rewarding shows that effectively connect with a niche audience over many years.
There's a glut of all art. Why? I think:
Now a days those in charge are only interested in making a quick buck. Building an audience takes time. Being a science fiction fan I find most SciFi shows last one season and disappear. I look at the videos I have in my collection of SciFi and most are one season: Almost Human, Terra Nova, Etc. You have to let people know about the show. Do you think Dr. Who would have the audience it has now if the powers in charge today were in charge. Dr. Who became a hit only after many years and this started with PBS showing them. PBS started to show them in the 70's and it wasn't until 2005 when it returned that it started to get a largte following. Other shows outside of the SciFi arena that are great show don't last either. Take the recent show Forever. It was good and had potential to be good but disappeared quick without really solving the show. Thank goodness someone had the brains to see s show like Firefly as something good and have a movie made to tie up the loose ends. Of course the fan base forced it but it still shows the big shots running the networks have no clue on how to do anything. They believe on doing shows for the audience that demand very little brains.
Ignoring the last sentence of the excerpt because it's utter twaddle, the rest sort of makes sense.
Except for one thing - creeping nichification[1]. If you make a series about a mute muslim lesbian who wants to be an NFL quarterback the list of people interested in watching it will be shorter than the end credits.
[1] It totally is a word, now.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's like saying there are too many books to read just because there is no longer time for one person to read them all before they die. The sooner the studios open their content to the world at large and stop their silly region blocking games they might find their audiences are actually much larger and willing to pay regionally appropriate rates if you let them seamlessly stream things on demand. Piracy is a response to the crappy implementation of getting content to consumers, and it will go away once the studios allow it to go away by making it more of a hassle to steal than pay. $1000 is the same weather you get it from 100 people paying ten dollars or 10000 people paying ten cents, minimal costs of bandwidth excluded obviously. China and India have a lot more than 10000 people last I checked. Netflix exists, and is kicking the other studios collective assess because they are doing exactly this, I wonder how long it will take them to stare a working model implementation in the face and still fail to grasp the concept. Sad part is, it still might not work, because who wants logins to each site? They should just hire the popcorn time developers and let all media companies from books to music have their content available on one portal and let each view, listen, or read go straight to the content creators and let it all compete fairly, globally.
This is the first time I see someone from the creative industry look at himself for why things are not going that well as 30 years ago without mentioning all the pirates on the Internet.
but there is not much on I like to watch. I guess I only see a few shows now. I cancelled my cable a few years ago because of the lack of programs I found interesting. ;) I liked Fringe as well(if you could fase out the stupid product placements).
Everyone seemed to go the "reality TV" route as in seeing people bitching on tv and not as in see someone with skills do something and explain how.
Also I miss good scifi programs. Doesn't have to be Star Trek
I haven't watched TV since the 90s but I often watch TV series over streaming -- and I'm pretty sure I have not come across any series about programming. Not a single one. :( The closest to it was IT crowd, which was admittedly great but only entertainment.
Anyway, perhaps I'd start watching TV again if there were more series about programming. I'd also like to see good TV tutorials on combinatorics, but that might just be my personal preference. I suppose I'd need to purchase some sort of antenna first, though.
That's always been true. It's about the medium, literally.
But if you are in the business of channeling folks into sitting idle while programming floods across their brains, I suppose it helps to have a variety of specific messages tuned to every basic personality type. Helps keep everybody hypnotized and separated from each other.
Back in the days of just a few channels and just a few programs, we had common stories everybody had seen, and from this drew our modern mythology. A good mythology makes for a healthy culture.
Now there are one of two basic conditions in effect; no culture, because the message is so fragmented, resulting in personal isolationism, OR the effort to tune into everything drains people so much that they are useless to the world.
Bread and circuses.
Both are toxic, it seems.
What are we, a bunch of soap opera addicts?
Infomercials. On CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, CW, and half of the Basic Cable Networks. Even PBS is running "Making Of" Pledge Specials about "Downton Abbey" or "Poirot", over and over again. Dammit PBS, just play the Shows instead.
Admittedly, it's 4AM, but there is actually a sizable group of people that stay up all night, by choice or necessity. As seen by the postings here thus far.
What they meant to say, but didn't, is that there are too many Networks with too many shows trying to cram all their "New" Content into one three hour time slot per Time Zone.
I don't have any Premium Channels, so I have no idea what's on there right now. I don't watch "Reality TV", (The exception: "Wheeler Dealers" on Velocity.), Cop Shows, (Exceptions: BBC stuff and "iZombie".), or Talent Shows. (No Exception.)
I watch Formula 1 on a local Spanish Channel, along with the World Cup, because they carry _all_ of the events, _And they don't show Commercials_. That's it for regular Sports for me. (The NBC coverage of the last America's Cup was surprisingly good. Their coverage of the Olympics was typically appalling.)
Even a decade back, there were still All Night Movies and Syndicated Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian programming. That's all gone. Just Infomercials now. And the Local Station reasoning is obvious; why pay a few hundred bux per Syndicated episode, when the promoters of Ronco's Bowel Straightener will pay you $30 for that same 3AM spot?
Syndication isn't dead though. They've just gone Daytime, and they stuff their dismal hours with Talk Shows, Court Shows, Quack Shows, and Attack Shows. Very cheap to produce, and aimed at an audience of Boobs. In fact, most members of the Audience have two of them.
Now, about diversity... We need a Bruce Campbell Network. 24 hours a day of Old Bruce, New Bruce, and what the hell, "She Spies" and "Cleopatra 2525". And it has to be Basic Cable. I bet that they could push a lot of Boner Pills.
This could even be packaged in Four Hour blocks and sold to local stations who are tired of all the Estrogen. (This is what the ARTS Network does, although they just give it all away. They make a point of not asking for money; they are 100% funded by a Bequest.) (The local Cable franchises dropped that local Educational Channel last year; they can do that these days.)
There may be a lot of New Programming these days, but if it's locked behind Paywalls and Subscription services, as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't exist. I'm cheap, but I'm also Honest, so no questionable downloading.
I just want to turn on the Tube at 3AM, while working on new designs for Marine LED lighting, and maybe catch what's being churned out from Toronto these days.
Lessee, we have shows about insane hairdressers in LA. We have weird shows about making people run around in the woods without clothing - but in a twist, blur out the tittilating bits. We have shows about the contents of storage units and parking meter attendants, we have shows about idiots who live in teh Alaskan bush, yet seem to know as much about survival in the bush as someone from New York city. We have shows about how people are stupid, and every human advance is because of ancient aliens. We have shows about peole who think that a woman's vagina is a clown car. I gotta stop - but there are hundreds more examples.
The fact is, Television today is simply bottom of the barrel bad!
And the channels that were good at one time have been taken over. The learning channel was once about learning, The history channel once had history, not swamp logging midgets who run a pawn shop in Alaska's north slope.
So no - it isn't too much programming. It's that none of it is worth watchning
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Very true. Then half the crappy sequels, reboots and lame, reworked versions of anything that came out before 1986 are set to music and staged on Broadway.
Firefly was pretty damn good but it was more of a Western in space.
Farscape was the best sci-if on TV or in movies.
Doctor Who is getting preachy. When Capelli's Doctor tells that woman that it's too bad she's a soldier and the blatant disgust with PE, I get little turned off. I am pretty anti-war myself (fight only when you REALLY have to), but the attack in individuals? And in the case of PE, he was an incredibly sympathetic character - it broke my heart when he was into a cyberman.
I want Farscape back. Show Criton's kid as a spunky teenager....scratch that, I had a vision of a Wesley Crusher.
Too much poor tv. Each show tries to be more perverted than the others. They're not funny nor are they written well. The writers have no education, don't know more than there 20 or so years of college fortification and drug usage had taught them. They don't know shit.
The problem with TV is that the amount of advertising is increasing to the point where watching in real time is too frustrating.
Of course people are turning to other sources where they can watch without the constant interruption of yet more and more and more commercials. The channels are starting to run certain ads more than once during a single ad break: Why would anyone want to watch that?
Without a PVR, TV is simply unwatchable.
Sometimes the "writing on the wall" is blood spatter...
John Landgraf should take comfort in knowing that there are some channels I can no longer watch, such as FX, since Fox Networks decided to set the CCI flag on all their programming back in July. He's done his part to make sure there are fewer programs available for me to choose from.
Make your show available from day 1 as On Demand. So that your customers don't absolutely have to watch it when it air, they can watch it whenever they have the time.
They are still stuck in the old terrible business model.
First, they could always use blipverts.
Second, 400+ new shows is somewhere between half to a third of a new show per channel per season, on average. That suggests that if there's too much new material, there are far, far too many channels. In fact, that might be the best solution. Shut down nine in every ten channels. Then you can have exactly the same amount of new material with less channel surfing. People will stay on channel because they'll like the next program as well.
The British did perfectly well on four channels. In fact, they mostly did perfectly well on three channels. America is, of course, bigger. They might need fifteen to cater to all the various needs. You don't need several thousand (including local). All it does is dilute the good stuff with a lot of crap.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Marvel, marvel, marvel, marvel. And Marvel. Marvel's doing it right.
If it's by Marvel Studios, I'll watch it. I'll probably love it. The cinematic universe is awesome and each new series is better than the last. I love how they're developing spinoff series to air in the season breaks, so I'm not left without something to watch most of the year now. I hope they do more. Two Marvel shows a week, year round? I'd totally be there, man. I quit watching formula one and Doctor Who to watch Agents of SHIELD, Agent Carter, and Daredevil. Now I'll get to add Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Mockingbird, Iron Fist, and the Defenders. And I'll love each one. I'll watch them all. I'd be down for four shows per week, year round, no problem. Can you imagine that? Four hours of TV per week! It's crazy, but I'd love it and I'd totally do it.
That'd be somewhere on the order of sixteen concurrent series at the current pace of episodes per season. I'll buy them all on DVD, too, the moment they're available. I have a little bookshelf for all my Marvel DVDs, right alongside the movies.
I'd love to see as much happening in the cinematic universe as in the comics, a couple dozen titles. It'd be great. I love Marvel Studios! I probably wouldn't feel oversaturated until I had to make hard choices about watching more than one episode per night. Strong editorial oversight is key, though: it's the quality that makes Marvel Studios worth watching. I won't watch just anthing. But if it's Marvel I'll watch it.
I'm intrigued by that new mature-audience Combiner Wars Transformers series in development, too. Hmmm. Everything else since Beast Wars has sucked, so that might be wishful optimism on my part. It's not Marvel, so hard to say... Hasbro's pretty lame. The toys are cool, though.
But anything else, if it's Marvel Studios, I'll watch it. I'm pretty sure Daredevil was responsible for Netflix' big record surge earlier this year, and it was awesome.
That reminds me, I need to go pick up this week's Secret Wars stack. Comic shop opens in a couple of hours. Time to feed the cats and get dressed. Freebirds for lunch!
I wonder if I should get a TV?
Whenever somebody wants to sell me TV service, I ask: Hey, what's my cut on watching those ads - how much do I get paid for that effort?
I never received an offer, so....
- Are there too few wars on the world?
- Can we pollute even more?
- Can we attract more trolls to ruin the site comments?
You know, I only keep the cable TV because of my son, who watches cartoons. And this because he's so young that reruns of the ones from the '60s are "new" to him.
Even so, we get annoyed at seeing the same cartoon again and again and again. He just lays on the sofa like a dog seemingly understanding better than us how TV works. Curiously, he has no attachment to the TV, since probably he thinks that show we'll appear over and over and he'll be able to catch up. Oh, and he jumps at any opportunity to go for a walk. Maybe he is really better than us...
Sci-fi, for instance, simply disappeared. "Its five-year mission" should be changed to "Its fifty-year mission". And don't start me on Sci-fi and sharks and fake ghosts.
Some country (India's Bollywood?) really should step up and start producing content, even if just to profit from the incompetence of current producers. Or the Chinese... I know they make crap at start, but the way things are they'll match American shows in some 3 to 4 years. Think "Sharknado" in Chinese...
And it's not different in other genres. The only one that is well-served are those involving Law: CSI, Breaking Bad etc. Maybe that could work in a nation of lawyers. In other countries, it's like having hamburgers every single day. You just run out of ways to serve them.
I remember television programmes from when I was a child with fond memories. I think that was because the ideas the stories were new to me. Now I find television programmes an irritating background noise. The adverts are louder than the programmes, and the adverts/commercials are so irritating loud and frequent that I forget what I was watching and I have to switch it off. I also find the programmes very silly and boring. All U.S. generals have a cigar in their mouths that is longer than their penis and they are slightly retarded. All U.S. cop programmes have a big mouth Sgt who is too fat to do up his own shoelaces. And the programmes background music doesn't go with the programmes and sounds like a baby has been let loose with an electric keyboard. Because I'm no longer accustomed to watching television I find the programmes a silly waste of time. In Japan you have flash ads. In the U.S. the ads are longer than the programmes. In the U.K. all the programmes are U.S. programmes. The BBC claims to be the best in the world but they show U.S. programmes. When they show British, programmes they are from the 60s like dad's Army Steptoe and son. The programmes are so old that all the actors are dead. They say the most popular programme is "Strictly Come Dancing, and East Enders". I think the viewers for such programmes are isolated geriatrics? On the satellite and "Freeview" are the same programmes as television but with more adverts and constant begging commercials starving Africans and animals with voice-overs begging for money to save donkeys in Turkey. British television is mostly U.S. television. And in the U.S. television is just unbearable! reality television, shopping channels, soap opera's and its ghost stories which are always true. U.S. television is truly shit.
It was not so long ago that writers complained about the closed Hollywood shop that kept most of them out of work most of the time. Viewers complained about interesting new TV series being canceled after two weeks of low ratings. Directors had to concentrate their efforts on a few cookie-cutter surefire hits because the costs of production were too high to allow for any mistakes. Even after cable proliferated, the complaint we all had was, "500 channels and nothing on."
Now, because technology has lowered the cost of program production and distribution, we live in the golden age of TV. All we have to do now to end the "glut" is fix the legal problem: make it easier to stream prior episodes of shows over long periods of time. Because we get some episodes soon after air and not others, and those for perhaps three weeks region-limited, and limited to some artificial number of "Verify your cable provider" carriers much smaller than the number that actually air the show, there is a tendency to stop watching a new series after one or two missed episodes so you can wait a year and then binge-watch the season on Netflix. Fixing the distribution problem would increase the current-season viewership of new shows, pleasing the advertisers because they would enjoy a larger, happier audience.
Many of the new series are only ten to thirteen episodes a season. That's a far cry from the traditional TV season where a series had ~23 episodes. Some still do, but not many. Most of them are quote good. But, with shorter seasons it's hard to believe that there are too many series now. They're spread out over many more networks than in the past.
Kill your tv?
Get up!
You can't be serious. Reality took over and it will never go away. Why? Probably costs 100k to put on one episode of a reality show. And it cost 100k+ to pay ONE actor in a real series. Kind of a no brainer for the creators.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
Our impression of a good and proper supply depends greatly on whether we're buying or selling.
Not "enough" supply of tech workers? Oil too expensive? Housing market "collapses"?
An increased supply of content is good for viewers. It doesn't need to be fixed.
-Dave
The answer is obviously no. I can't find any half decent programming show on Java or C, let alone some new fangled language like Go and Swift.
Almost by definition if you are a slashdot reader, you are likely to be of significantly above average intelligence AND a geek. It's not therefore a great surprise if there's not a lot that appeals to us. Add in the fact that we're more like to be playing games than watching TV, and it's not a surprise that there's very little out there that works for us. Which means that the audience figures for the shows that we like will be in the pits, and so they will get cancelled. Which means we don't bother to check for new shows etc...
Whilst for the average slashdotter knows how to play the PVR game, most people do. Also a lot of people have TV on as wallpaper rather than actually engaging with it. Given these premises, it's hardly a surprise if the quality of TV is and remains awful.
Wow, so there are people watching TV in the 21st century. About half of my colleagues (SW developers, quite many have children) do not own a TV set. TV set, the one you watch TV programmes on. Of course we have 40"+ FullHD screens, Chromecast or similar, NAS, broadband internet (no Netflix and Amazon Prime service here, because they hate money) and even archaic devices such as DVD player.
As a viewer. Up until about 8 years ago, I had very little to choose from in variation of tv and movie entertainment options.
In a general sense, the 'major players' had become extremely predictable.
Every summer, movies 'blockbuster' movies would come out with either robots, superheroes, or aliens - or a variation of the theme.
And television shows - generally featured the equivalent of 'Friends' spun any which way.
Sure, there's been gems here and there. Futurama and the Simpsons which last quite a while. Then there's wonderful exceptions such as Angel, Firefly, Doctor Who and Star Trek. But more often than not, it seems like these shows are cancelled as fast as the executives can get their grubby mitts into it by introducing gun battles and cowboys versus indians and "scary monster crap" to eventually kill the show.
It's almost as if this is a calculated counter measure the producers and writers take on these shows to kill them. .
Now though. and for a few years, there's more intelligent and diverse entertainment options arriving and too much for any one critic or mindless executive to control and kill. Whether it's original entries like Dexter or Mr Robot, or it's a derivation of a theme, it's refreshing to have so many entertainment options that have not been dissected by these people who just can't keep up with the options.
To the creative types introducing the wonderful variety of entertainment starting to be offered.
I say increase the supply.
And I want to see more superhero, alien, and villain, space explorer and time traveler comedies and love stories.
There's more to life than head shots and reusing the same recipes over and over again without introducing new spices to the mix.
Monster: Living off the Big Screen, by John Gregory Dunne.
You'll think twice about believing anything a movie or TV executive ever says.
I've been forecasting exactly the thing mentioned in the blurb for years. There are only so many hours in the day for people to seek to be entertained. Entertainment comes in many forms television being one of them. So lets say that the hours people watch TV (or other media) per day is capped at 8hrs eg, every waking moment that isn't work or sleep. That means that television viewership can ONLY grow at the expense of other television viewership OR at the population growth rate. I would wager good money that the number of hours of media produced per year is going up at a rate substantially above the population growth rate.
Added to the fact that the old media content is still accessible the figure of "new content produced per year" should probably be adjusted up by some scaling factor of content produced in previous years (probably a belle curve since the older the show/movie gets the less likely it is to be seen).
A race to the bottom is ensuing.... the problem is its a race to the bottom in terms of quality.... not price. If they cannot get the viewership, they cannot get the money to support the show. Advertising revenue is more or less fixed at # of eyeballs on screen. This yields designing shows for the lowest common denominator.
Wouldn't it be nice if a tv show when its announced would tell you how long it was scheduled to run. Say if networks were forced to buy the show as a package and not piecemeal episode by episode or season by season? It would kinda force network execs to commit to shows or face legal recourse. Say if they cancel it after 2 seasons and it was budgeted for 5, they have to pay a big penalty to the show creator for breach of contract.
It might also have a beneficial effect on the show creators whereby they know how long the show is going to run for before starting and they can pace themselves. It could also help prevent "jumping the shark" where shows just go on endlessly because its still profitable but long ago lost all purpose.
The problem is that a lot of studios are trying to produce cash cows, and audiences aren't buying it.
These shows establish a basic over arching story that people are actually interested in. But spend 90% of the show with monster of the week crap that no one is interested in. With the goal being of milking the show for as long as possible. With two predictable results: Most shows are just garbage that never pick up a fan base and die after a season or two. While a handful shows get lucky and they milk it for years until the audience gets pissed off.
Studios need to start producing shows that are designed to end. Stop producing comic-book style never ending stories, and start producing long movies. Shows like Dexter and Battlestar Galactica had amazing ideas in them, but the writers just lurched from season to season trying to keep the things afloat. There needs to be a story with a fixed end point, and once the show gets there it ends and that talent moves on to something else. I'd much rather watch a bunch of long-miniseries type shows like Rome, Band of Brothers, Sherlock, Jekyll, Babylon 5, etc. That are designed to end. Than all these shows that just milk a good idea to death.
I started getting fed up with TV back in the 90s when they cancelled multiple shows I really loved after a single season. My So-Called Life and Space: Above and Beyond were 2 examples. In the mid 2000s, I dropped cable and went to disc only viewing.
Now I make it a point to not even look at a series until it has gone for three seasons. No more wasting my time on one-season wonders. I will occasionally violate the rule for a good reason. For example, I got into Veronica Mars after only 2 seasons because Joss Whedon said it was the best show he'd ever seen. That was good enough for me.
Anyway, I'm relying on the rest of you folks to watch the current series and keep them going long enough to reach the point where I might become interested and check them out.
I don't watch TV. ;)
> The British did perfectly well on four channels.
Yes, they did, but with the advent of cable and satellite in the late 80's (and Net-streamed channels in recent years), the number of UK channels exploded and are now probably approaching 1,000. Of course, 950 of those 1,000 channels are completely hopeless and probably have viewers in the hundreds or thousands.
The quality of British TV has nosedived in inverse proportion to the number of channels available - the "big 5" UK channels are now so bad, that I'm down to recording maybe 5-6 shows a week (it used to 40-50 about 20 years ago). BBC and ITV compete for the lowest of the low-brow now - endless quizzes, soaps, reality shows and "talent" shows dominate prime-time viewing and it's been many years since I've liked any UK TV comedy (Have I Got News For You remains the only regular UK comedy show I'll bother recording).
I'm finding that the best US shows are just so much higher quality now than their UK equivalents, so a decent broadband connection is all I need to satisfy my viewing needs...
The more shows that are made makes the value of all shows drop. It's time for pricing to reflect this.
First, who watches TV anymore? When I remodeled my new home, I didn't even bother running new cable lines into it for TV.. just a line into the basement mech room for internet. I don't even have an HD TV OTA antenna. I watch most content on a second display monitor while working on my primary monitor... or watching on ipad in bed. I haven't watched television for just over a decade.
I watch content when it is on a cheap service, like Netflix. Or I download it from torrents, when I get around to it. I almost never watch things as they air (though Amazon does show some shows about a week after they air, which I will sometimes catch). I won't pay $20 for a DVD or digital download of a movie, when I can get two and a half months of netflix for that... and have Amazon Prime Instant all year long as part of my Prime delivery subscription. I won't waste my time watching television,w hen that means I have to schedule my life around it and then sit through 33% of the time being commercials.
I usually watch shows when their season is done. Actually, not even that. I generally wait until the entire run has finished, so I know if it is worth watching. Then I watch it. I don't want to waste my time on bullshit. And I wont' waste my money, either. No Hulu, because I wont' pay to be served adds *and* have a shitty selection of content. I won't pay for cable, because I'm not wasting $200 USD/mo for that shit. I won't pay for owning movies or renting them on services, because I'm not paying half or more of a netflix subscription just to watch 90 minutes of a film. I won't pay for a movie theater film (I haven't gone to the theater since 1998), because I'm not spending $80-100 for an all-night-long obligation when I could just wait a couple months and watch it online for a fraction of the price and without the bullshit of a theater.
It used to be that people bragged about not watching television, because . . . I dunno. I guess for the same reason people brag about being out of touch with their own popular culture on all sorts of other things. But it has been a long time since that was relevant. For the last ten or fifteen years, people have opted -- like me -- to not watch television, because . . . well . . . it isn't the ideal (or even tolerable) experience for receiving our video entertainment. It would be like asking people "do you still ride a horse and buggy to get your groceries?". No, it's 2015... We fucking order it online and a truck brings t hem to our door and a guy brings them into our kitchen. Because it's 2015 and not 1815.
Honestly I don't watch any series any more. There far too many dumb reality TV programs out there that are just as mind numbing as sitting and smoking weed the entire evening. Maybe if I did smoke weed I would find TV more entertaining - they should look into this and see whether ratings are higher in Colorado and other states that have legalized.
The only thing I do watch is the evening news, and *some* science programs. My wife watches sports, but even there the economics are all screwed up with the networks overpaying for mediocre stuff, which results in overpaid coaches and overpaid athletes, and the inevitable scandals which result from this. Even here, more sports are going to a streaming model, and once that transition is complete, a whole bunch more people will cut the cord.
Huh? Who watches teevee?
I watch youtube. There is just too much of everything there to watch!
The current Doctor's dislike of soldiers isn't the show being preachy, it's showing a character flaw of the current Doctor. Did you not notice the finale where he gets his faced rubbed in it when PE The Soldier saves the world? and then his best friend Alistair The Soldier saves the Doctor from the agony of killing the only other member of his race?
Lillehammer (unless you hate sub-titles, its English and Norwegian). We watch around 2-4 Episodes per week.
There is more high quality entertainment on than I can watch. And I've been retired 3 years.
So I filter on price.
The current prices of entertainment and talent are unreasonably high given the glut.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
There is no single credible new Sci Fi show, let alone anything of the caliber of Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica. If there is audience saturation, is because every network is trying to copy plot lines that made money a few years ago, but people are looking for variety. Imagine a VR-based series which is also a game, and top players get to interact with professional actors on national TV. Think there will be a few folks who are interested to watch the show and play the game?
I think the axe should be taken to all of these 'reality' shows. Sure it's cheap for the networks because they don't have to pay professional actors or writers. But is society really served by watching a bunch of housewives sitting around debating what shade of polish to paint their toenails when they get their next pedi?
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Who watches shows on a schedule anymore? It might take me a year or two before I start watching a series. By then I know which have multiple seasons and might be worth watching. But I eventually do get around to every series that I would have watched on a schedule. In fact I have more time now to watch shows and I watch more shows. No more 2am mornings with nothing to watch. We need to get shows to stop all this fall/spring premiere schedule stuff and instead have new shows every month. And no more pilot episodes but rather half season pilot series. In fact it would be better for the shows if they just did away with seasons all together and instead focused on shows more as mini series. And maybe a series takes two years to get renewed... so what.
In my recent, and ongoing, bad movie kick I watched a Uwe Boll movie called Tunnel Rats. It's actually pretty good and on Hulu though you may need a paid account in order to view it though I'm sure you can find it if you wanted it bad enough. It had far fewer explosions than I expected. It ended just as I expected but it went to the ending in a very unexpected way. I was hoping for a worse movie but ended up with a good one. It was surprisingly well done. I was expecting more explosions given the theme.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Today you can produce a decent quality show with a couple thousand dollars in equipment.
We return now to the real world of digital media.
TV literary agent Peter Micelli was forthcoming about how Netflix --- and other digital media upstarts --- do business with Hollywood during a panel discussion Friday at the UCLA Entertainment Symposium. He went so far as to specify how much was spent to produce some of the series CAA has sold to Netflix.
''The cheapest show is $3.8 million an episode,'' Micelli told a crowd of more than 500 lawyers in the entertainment business. '' 'House of Cards' started at $4.5 million and (executive producer David) Fincher took it way above that.''
''The next series is 'Hemlock Grove' and they're doing that for about $4 million an episode,'' he said. '' 'Orange is the New Black' is just under $4 million as well. They're huge budgets shows, theyâ(TM)re doing things in a huge way.''
{"Netflix will] pay a large percentage of the budget . They control it for four years exclusively and then can turn around to re-sell to a cable channel.''
''Amazon is looking at it on a smaller scale, with comedies, but spending a million dollars per episode.''
Netflix Series Spending Revealed [March 8 2013]
The geek thinks consumer grade video tech and maybe some OS solutions for F/X, audio and editing.
The pro thinks about the time, material resources, talent, imagination and experience that he will need across the board.
Just donate some new scripts the Hollywood industries, they're plagued with sequels, reboots and lame, reworked, versions of anything that came out before 1986.
The nerd and the geek have been obsessively crafting replicas of the ST:TOS Enterprise bridge, costumes, make-up and props for their fan-fiction productions since the seventies. I don't expect to see anything new coming from that direction.
People normally complain that there are too many REPEATS, and not ENOUGH original stuff! This post is back to front.
Does anyone watch network TV? Huh.
Gutenberg created a world where there are just too many books published in a year to be read in a year.
Something must be done!
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
...to replace our 25 year old CRT (with converter box), but it doesn't work. There's nothing Smart on TV.
You can't compete with "The Wire".
Thank goodness I have a DVR. When I'm stuck at home during the week, there's nothing to watch. It's all crap. Mostly chick stuff. I'm seeing more stuff where there's one or two dumbasses that have a camera - and they have a show! Bad as rap is to music. As if rap is music.
Here's my satellite TV - over 500 channels. Still nothing to watch.
"Quality" is the concern :-)
I'll just keep watching reruns of Bar Rescue, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, and Airplane Repo until there's a new season of Firefly.
So a new season of "Scandal," for example, is also competing against old series like "The Wire." "So a new season of "Scandal," says Landgraf.
No, there is definitely NOT "too much new programming". There's not enough new programming that is worth watching. Content producers are targeting advertiser dollars, and this has nothing to do with what I would ever watch. So I don't. Nothing new here.