ScreenwriterGuy.com

Revised version of a posting originally from
May 8, 2007.

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Sometimes the title of a post speaks for itself. Here are my thoughts about some of the worst changes to Television over the last 25 years or so.

#10.  Inescapable commercials
Commercials are going to be a theme for this list. We’ll start with the fact that they now bleed into the shows themselves. You do your duty and watch your two minutes of messages from our sponsors. But now the advertising bleeds into the actual content. It’s harmless enough that the network pops their logo onto the lower right corner. Heck, it’s actually almost helpful when you’re channel surfing. Not helpful? The motion graphic ads overlaying the bottom third of your screen telling you five or six times during your show about how you should watch some other show. I’m already doing what you want, watching your network, is that not enough for you any more?  (A fantastic parody arose, back when Joe Millionaire was frequently chased across the bottom of the screen by money-grubbing female suitors. The Simpsons did their own, animated version of the ad, with Homer distracted by the intrusion.)

#9.  Closing credits… with MORE commercials
Look, somebody made that entertainment you’re watching, for free.  Time was, a comfortable theme song outro would usher out the show, and the mother each contributor to the production would get a split second of screen time pride.  Instead, the credits now rush by, accelerated to a barely legible pace, squished into the half of the screen not being occupied by yet another commercial.  Heaven forfend the viewer get up and pee before s/he’s hooked into the next show, or at least treated to a seventeenth reminder of what will be playing later that night.

#8.  ”Supersizing” and off-hour programming
At first it seemed like an actual bonus. Networks were offering extra minutes of your favorite shows. What could be better? But soon, especially in combination with shows that run just a couple minutes late, it’s clear that the networks’ true motivation is to trap us into staying for their other shows. Last week, thanks to supersizing and an E.R. wedding event, Scrubs was on from like 9:18 to 9:57. Sunday, the DVR wouldn’t let me record Entourage at 10 because my housemate’s recording of Desperate Housewives runs until 10:02. Come on, networks. Give us a break, and go back to fitting it into a grid.

#7.  “For Ordering Information…”
This one is more a problem of the cable and satellite companies than of Television itself, but it proves an annoyance to my viewing experience, so I’m including it. When I sign up for TV, and I get a hundred channels, or whatever, I want THOSE channels. I don’t want to see a blank screen accounting for each channel I DON’T get, encouraging me to dial an 800 number so that I will get it. Plus, empty call-to-order screens are no longer isolated to the 600 and 700 tiers, as they once were. Now there are channels I don’t get randomly littered throughout my Time-Warner offering. When I want to surf, I want to surf, and all the boxing pay-per-views and Latin Disney channels get in the way of that.

#6.  Reality
This one’s a little obvious, but neither can it go unsaid. Sure, I’m severely biased, as someone who wants to write for television; the fewer scripted shows, the fewer opportunities for me to get a job somewhere. Yes, the pendulum has finally started swinging the other way, and prime time reality TV is on the outs. Not soon enough, to my mind. But we still see reality shows, with their minuscule production costs, plaguing summer programming, cheaper for the nets than even paying the royalties on a repeat. I’d rather see a rerun, frankly, than the latest installation of people whoring and humiliating themselves.  Let us not forget the reality show’s ugly cousin, the prime time game show. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire nearly ended ABC when they relied on it too heavily. Now we have NBC happy to put Deal or No Deal into any available slot, happy for the high mid-range ratings, rather than testing out new programming.  People, all I can say is please. Please stop watching these shows. Like so many things in life, if we ignore them, they will go away.

My mom likes to insist that she never watches reality television. Well, just American Idol. Idol is such a ratings juggernaut that the other networks just get out of its way. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are owned by Idol, and no one even pretends they can compete. Do you think Lost came back to Wednesdays at 10, instead of its previous 9 p.m. slot, because ABC wanted to run lots and lots of According to Jim? Nope. So I lose a job opportunity on not just one network, but also its competitors.

Stop watching. For my sake.

#5.  ”Stay tuned…”
You want me to stick around through the last commercial. I get it. Scenes from next week’s episode? That might be worth a couple minutes more of my attention. A “bonus” scene from tonight’s Battlestar Galactica? Pretty weenie, and I wish you’d stop, but at least it’s something. However, telling me to stick around for more My Name Is Earl, and then there isn’t any? Not cool. That’s called lying.

#4.  The death of the theme song
We’re on commercials again, and this is really a corollary to #1, but it deserves its own mention. Because networks have pushed the commercials to be longer and longer, leaving producers less and less time for their actual content, theme songs have had to make room.  But that scrapes at the soul of a TV show! Would Cheers have been half as comfortable without its theme song? Would we remember the underlying love between Archie and Edith if we didn’t hear them sing before each episode? Would the A-Team have stirred my 10-year-old adrenal glands without the help of its opening song?Now we’re down to a super-compressed song with a few credits.  LOST gives us a theme song with one note. More like a sound effect, really.

I liked TV better when I could go where everybody knows my name.

#3.  Sensationalism
I hate local news. It actually angers me. I hate its ratings-driven fluff-mongering. I hate cable news for its polarizing over-examination of poppy “issues.” Remember when news was a straight-forward presentation of facts, ratings be damned? Neither do I, but I’m pretty sure that somewhere in my childhood, that’s what it was like. I get my news from the internet, BBC radio, and The Daily Show, which has oddly become one of the more respectable talk politics sources on the air.

#2.  The sound byte
Speaking of important news, when is the last time you heard a political candidate offer more substance than a talking point? Political debates are now a joke, with their 90-second statements and 30-second rebuttals, all for the sake of (supposedly) good television.

#1.  The commercial-to-programming ratio
The pilot episode of All in the Family is 26 minutes long. Today, a new sitcom gets 20 minutes, 30 seconds. No wonder no one wants to watch sitcoms any more. Producers don’t have time to tell a story! And in syndication, episodes sometimes get cut even tighter, leaving room for more commercials, at the expense of the jokes.When you catch a sitcom today, you spend 32% of that time on commercials. Hour-longs fare a little better, with only 27% commercial, but that’s still a ridiculously large fraction of your viewing time. Is it any wonder that HBO has done well with its original programming?

But let me not be merely the critic who grumbles about problems while offering no solution. I’m happy to offer networks a viable alternative. I get that it’s a business, and I get that this change in programming time comes from the continual conglomeration of networks into bottom-line corporations.  However, in the business world, competitive advantage goes to those who differentiate. With every network cutting deeper into programming time, the way to differentiate would be to do the opposite. Have FEWER commercials!

Advertisers currently insist that they should be paying lower rates to broadcast commercials, since DVR technology means people fast forward past the ads. But would you insist on fast forwarding through commercials if there were fewer of them? Or if there were less of the insipid ones, and more of the clever ones? It’s quite satisfying to watch an episode of Entourage or Weeds, with their 28+ minutes of quality storytelling. Imagine programs like that scheduled on a prime time major network. You’d watch that, wouldn’t you? So the networks can charge super premium rates for the one commercial, but it’s worth it to the advertisers because we audience members don’t even pick up our remotes when a good Super Bowl commercial plays.  Win-win-win.

Networks, feel free to give me all the credit once you’ve implemented my idea.

I’ll be the guy over here, not holding his breath.