Thursday , March 28 2024
You may not have a Nielsen box, but the power can still be in your hands.

The New TV Season Is Upon Us And The Power Is In Your Hands

If my calculations are correct, and I believe they are, while the television season has started to some extent, it's a week from today when things really get going. It's a week from today when shows like How I Met Your Mother begin and Heroes come back and Boston Legal begins its final season. It's a week from today when I'm really going to have to buckle down and get serious about my TV watching.

It feels like this moment has been a long time coming, like it's been way too long since the last TV season ended. Some of that is definitely due to the writers' strike, but I don't know that all the blame belongs there. However, we're not here to play the blame game, are we? We've come together not to look to place blame, but to search for hope. We've come together not to worry about the past, but to think towards the present and the future. The lessons we can learn from the past ought not be ignored, and they must not be forgotten, but they should not cause us to lose sight of our future either.

It's this moment in time when we have to think back to the good of last year, Pushing Daisies, and forget the bad, Bionic Woman. It's time for us to forget about how bad some of the season-long story arcs were, My Name is Earl and Heroes, and to remember that next Monday is the day we all get to start fresh.

Sure, some of it has started already, but it really all begins in earnest next Monday. Change is coming. The future is approaching. That can't be helped, that can't be altered, but we do get to choose what that future will be. We all get to vote, and, unlike some other elections, here we get to vote more than once. We get to vote minute-by-minute (okay, quarter-hour by quarter-hour), and, interestingly, not all votes are created equal here.

There is a power elite. There are a select few who have Nielsen boxes (or "People Meters"), and it's really those people who count more than the rest of us. Those are the people who rule our televisual destiny. Those are the people you and I must influence. Those are the people you and I must find and cajole and convince and brow-beat (but never physically harm) until they watch what you and I want them to watch.

Find these people, talk to them about your hopes and dreams. Explain to them why Chuck deserves to be a Top 20 show. Tell them how swell it would be if Scrubs manages to live on for yet another year. Show them just how good one man's pies can be.

There may be a power elite, but that doesn't mean that you and I have to simply sit back and accept their choices. Talk about your favorite show at the water cooler, get a TiVo Season Pass for your favorite shows, post little stickies all over your office with the names of your favorite shows on them.

The time is now (or, more accurately, next Monday), the place is everywhere, and your viewing future is in your hands.

About Josh Lasser

Josh has deftly segued from a life of being pre-med to film school to television production to writing about the media in general. And by 'deftly' he means with agonizing second thoughts and the formation of an ulcer.

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