It has become quite commonplace in the past decade or two for people to complain that there is nothing on TV. I hear it from my parents frequently.
Hundreds of channels and not a single thing worth watching. It's a pet peeve of mine to hear this, and it makes the speaker sound ignorant. To those people, I say "nonsense!" There is plenty on. They just have to know where to look.
For some people, it's become a badge of honor to deride television, proclaiming it an inferior form on entertainment. While many of the popular shows of previous decades may have been only entertainment, not for the "thinking man," the modern era has gone in a different direction, getting into heavy drama, and expanding the limits of what makes it on the air. Suddenly, we have plenty to celebrate and honor on our sets.
It's true, the vast majority of the channels on your cable lineup broadcast drivel. They are full of reruns of shows from the 1980s (edited down since we have more commercials now), reality junk, and talk shows. Does anyone ever even turn on the music channels, of which we all have dozens? Yes, I agree that all of this is a waste. But that doesn't mean there is nothing on TV.
Let's be clear about my definition of what constitutes a good television show. Competition and game shows don't qualify, nor do most shows with a host, save The Daily Show and a couple of others. I also hate sports, and shows that follow the "real housewives" or a "celebrity" around. I enjoy scripted series, with great acting and smart writing. As a fiction from way back, I want my TV series to contain interesting story arcs week to week, and characters that grow, meaning, most procedural crime shows don't do it for me.
Even within those guidelines, though, there are quite a few choice programs. Between my two TiVos, I can record 450 hours of HD, and I'm at 95% capacity right now. That oughta tell you something. If you look for it, there's plenty of good stuff out there.
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Article comments
1 - John Lake
Hundreds of stations and I'm watching a Mary Tyler Moore rerun for the third or fourth time. Have to wait thru that long drawn out theme and credits.
I relax with the Music Choice. When there's no one around, its "Singers and Swing" every time.
2 - Dr Dreadful
I don't know what we ever did without DVR, especially now that most broadcast shows are at least one-third commercials. We scarcely ever watch live TV in our household any more.
The big networks are still good at churning out dramas and comedies but most of their output is nevertheless garbage. Sadder still is that even many of the cable channels that used to be a bit more cerebral, such as the History Channel, Discovery, Science and Animal Planet, now broadcast 90% dreck.
And as for news - forget it. You're better off on the Internet.
PBS is the only one with consistently high standards but really you have to be fortunate enough to live in a market where it's well-funded. In my city, the vast majority of its content is repeats and I often find myself searching in vain through the schedule for something worth recording.
That said, TV with low nutritional value is probably a blessing in disguise, if it gets one off the sofa and out of the house to do something more worthwhile.
3 - Igor
I don't watch the commercial stations often: the commercials are offensive and the fare is thin. In fact I seldom watch drama and fiction anymore except the many "Wallender" movies: I've just discovered the marvelous/execrable Rolf Larsgard as the rumpled Swedish detective, and enjoy it immensely. I'm a fan of "Montalbano", too.
Boycott the commercial networks and watch PBS and PBS-like networks such as the local KCSM feed (2 subchannels of WorldView and MHZ and then you can always go to the fabulous KCSM jazz audio feed, at least in NorCal).
PBS-KIDS is better than the competition, with programs like Dragonfly TV and Science Quest.
4 - Igor
The best music program on TV is Classic Arts Showcase, which is distributed free and without commercials worldwide. It's also available on internet and even a C-band satellite broadcast (in case you're in darkest Africa).
The CAS videos have been upgraded over the past few years and augmented by some stunning interviews and other archival footage.
Of course, a number of those videos are now available on youtube and other feeds, where you can pick them out individually, but the serendipitous pleasure of seeing, e.g., Anna Netrebkos performance of "My Kisses Are like Fire" at the Promms is hard to beat.
5 - Igor
Sports on TV enjoyed a revival about 10 years ago when HDTV was introduced, because they could shoot the whole baseball infield diamond and a viewer could watch the runners prepare for the pitch, the basemen adjust their positions, etc., then follow the whole play as the ball is delivered. It was almost as good as being there! Conventional baseball broadcasts were ruined by the poor visual resolution that required focusing on a small field and then jerking the camera around. It was exhausting to view a game!
Other games were improved by the HDTV opportunity: basketball could show an entire half-court, soccer could show the defensive field, football could show the entire backfield, tennis showed the whole court. For awhile HDTV tennis performed a real service by shooting at waist level so that one could see players moving around in the "athletic posture", knees bent, butt pointed downward, which is the key to success and survival in sports. The "athletic posture" is taught by all good coaches because it improves speed and recoverability and minimizes injuries, but it's difficult to teach because people watch sports from an elevated viewpoint that eliminates that perspective.
But then HDTV cameramen reverted to the bad habits of their predecessors, jerking and panning the cameras.
That, plus the lamentable propensity of sports executives to be "up close and personal" (with people I had NO interest in being close to) brought back the scrotum-scratch in HDTV, with a vengeance.
Maybe the only TV sport still worth watching is Aussie Rules Football.
6 - Igor
I think there's a LOT on TV. Yesterday I turned on the PBS station at 11AM, just as a test since I usually have other things to do at 11AM, and was treated to a NOVA documentary on the separation of two conjoint twin girls (a medical adventure as great and exciting as any made-up adventure on CSI-TV). After that was an Alan Alda documentary on "The Human Spark" dealing with the evolutionary history of various hominids over the past 100,000 years. After that was a Yul Kwon narrated documentary in the "America Revealed" series about the transportation system in the USA.
Three hours of absolutely fascinating viewing. I know that it had been shown before, but I'd not seen it and that's one of the blessings of PBS: they do rerun what you missed.
Perhaps your jaded view of TV betrays that you are watching too much commercial TV.
7 - Dr Dreadful
Igor, you're lucky in that your local PBS station seems to be well-enough funded to be able to purchase a lot of original, quality programming. Down here in San Diego, not so much. Last night I had a look at the upcoming schedule for the next two weeks, and could find nothing that might be worth watching except the news and the third season of Downton Abbey, which I'll probably pass on anyway as I didn't catch the first two seasons. The rest was all kids' shows, new-agey "self help" propaganda broadcasts and repeats of music programs that have been shown hundreds of times before.
I ingest very little TV anyway so perhaps I'm being too harshly selective, but if I'm going to sit down and actively watch something I want it to be worth my time.
As for Nova and the other exemplary documentaries (not to mention those classic British sitcoms) that we got in the PBS market where we used to live, I don't think I've ever seen them on the schedule in the year and a half we've been down here.
8 - Dr Dreadful
That said, there is another channel that we receive called AxsTV - owned by Mark Cuban - that has a lot of good programming (exclusively in HD) with very few commercial interruptions. They broadcast the excellent Dan Rather Reports, among other things.
9 - Igor
You need to switch to OTA: that's right "Over The Air" TV. You need an antenna and a good receiver. Get rid of your satellite and cable: they are degraded quality anyhow.
Every American resident (even a renter, even if you're in someone elses building) is entitled to have an external antenna. Landlords hate it, but a 1950s law requires that every American have access to free OTA television.
Look around for OTA web clubs in your area.
San Diego HDTV
San Diego free TV
10 - UFQuack
"The Office, Community, New Girl, The Big Bang Theory, Nashville, Grimm, Parenthood, Arrow, Once Upon a Time, Bones, Elementary, The Good Wife, Happy Endings, How I Met Your Mother, and Revolution are among the broadcast series I am watching right now." Ah! The key is to watch total garbage just to say there's something on!