TV is Dead

In the age of HDTV, it’s ironic that television has never been worse. This very paradox may have spawned the hipster movement with all the irony going on. That and Pabst Blue Ribbon.
The other night, I was channel surfing. It’s late Summer, and I’m not expecting much. I certainly wasn’t expecting three shows about auctions. Shows like this just sort of creep up on you. You’ll see an ad for a reality TV show, maybe about a couple having too many kids, and you’ll think to yourself, “That looks terrible.” Still, people will watch it. Then, there’s suddenly another show, only this couple has more kids. Then there’s all kinds of spin-off, marathons and specials, until entire channels are devoted to nothing but people having too many children. The last weird fad I noticed like this was about cupcakes. It started off being cakes. There’s shows about cake bosses, and cake judging, and bakeries, etc. Then from that came cupcakes. I think there were at least four cupcake shows last time I checked. One show was an “America’s Next Top Model” style show about cupcakes, where judges were making catty comments about the cupcakes the contestants made, and the contestants themselves were all catty bitches telling each other they weren’t in the competition to make friends. Contestants were being put-down by the judges until they were at the point of tears because their cupcake aren’t moist enough. Another one is just about a bakery that specializes in cupcakes. The most bizarre thing about these shows is that no matter how many of them you watch, you will never learn how to make cupcakes. It’s not a show that teaches. Another show is completely about two girls running a bakery for cupcakes. I know this because my wife was watching it in the other room as I was sitting here complaining about these show. By watching this show, you will never learn how to run a successful bakery. Directors and producers have taken the blandest material, and then take away all the entertainment value and education.
These auction shows are even bigger B.S.. If you try to describe it, it sounds like The Antique Road Show, but it’s not, because it’s not a show about rare, historical valuables. It’s about people buying people’s garbage. They call themselves treasure hunters, but they’re really dumpster divers. If you’ve ever bid on anything on eBay, you’re as close to a professional as these people are. There’s the one show, Storage Wars, where they bid on storage lockers before viewing the contents, then try and pretend everything inside is a priceless valuable. Then there’s another show exactly like it, because those guys are a bunch of a-holes, and this other group of complete unknowns in a subculture no one knows or cares about are the real deal. Then there’s about fifteen shows like this about pawn shops, a retail industry dying faster than record stores. You might as well do a show about blacksmithing, since it’s as relevant to today’s culture. These shows operate on the premise that every item they buy has a story behind it. A very boring story.