So I'm catching up on e-mail with half an eye on the idiot box where my better half is watching the new episode of the "Closer"...
it is good, almost good enough to make me stop what I'm doing and watch with full attention
why are the cable channels, TNT and USA, not to mention HBO and Showtime making better new shows, and sticking with them, then the regular over-the-air channels? And why do they get to do clever things like airing new episodes off-season?
So the Three Letter Channels do go through a lot of shows, each season, and by Sturgeon's Law most are crap, but the number of interesting, even half-innovative, well acted and plotted shows is shrinking, and the proportion of cheap imported concept "reality" shows is increasing, presumably because they are cheap and easy, but, even then almost every new comedy or drama they try to put on is terrible. Really embarrassingly terrible. Even when they do the easy cheap thing and import a successful UK concept for a show.
Some curious dynamics driving things to the mean and the mean down to the bottom,
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The people who buy advertising, the people who sell advertising, and the people who make space for that advertising to go have no incentive for quality. See also similar with movie trailers: so long as the commercial gets you to watch, and so long as you keep coming back for more, why change the quality of the product. Worse, while the people who buy advertising have *some* incentive for quality, they do only basic research on their ads' placement and use. A tragedy of the commons, even.