Student Voice

Monday

December 9, 2024

Opinion

Modern television programs offer little substance, content

February 18, 2010

I come back to my room after an intense 4-5 hours of lecture, and all I want to do is take an hour and watch something good on television.  It’s too bad my best choices are ‘The People’s Court’ and a movie that has run 5 times this month already on channel 10. 

What the hell? 

When you think of someone criticizing what’s on television, you probably imagine a 70 year old man talking about how when he was our age, there wasn’t so much garbage on.  Well, I agree with that old man.  There is simply way, way too many garbage shows, channels, and programming on our television. 

Basically, I’m going to go after certain shows, and if you happen to be a fan of a certain one I mention, I apologize, but truthfully really don’t care if I’m upsetting you.  Now, one thing that I’ll stay away from is the “news media,” because I feel like that is a whole angry column waiting to happen. 

Let me start off by saying “What the hell, History Channel?” 

Yes, that’s right, “The History Channel.”  Don’t get me wrong, for the most part, I love everything about it.  I always enjoyed watching the channel when they would have legit ‘history’ shows covering anything from World War II stories and secrets to ancient Egypt. 

Lately, however, I don’t think it should be called “The History Channel” at all.  Seriously, the channel should almost be changing its name to ‘The Random Crap/Prophecy’ channel.  This goes back a couple years now, and with current programming, is truer than ever. 

Just look at some of these shows that or current or at least recent: “Life After People,” “Nostradamus,” “UFO Hunters,”  “Jurassic Fight Club” and the list goes on.  The worst is “Monster Quest.” The back stories of some of the ‘monsters’ in these shows are kind of cool, but it’s the same show basically every episode.  “Well, we sent out a team of experts, we found some startling evidence, but not really, maybe we’ll find it someday.” 

Come on, “History Channel,” do you realize how many options you have?!

You’re the HISTORY channel, that’s pretty much anything and everything that happened before today.  I don’t need to know if some prophet thinks the world might end in 2012, if I want to know about that stuff I look it up on some paranoid blogger’s page. 

Let’s reference something a little more recent.  Shows like “The Bachelor,” need to go away. 

I’ll log on to Facebook later in an evening, and half the statuses will be something like “He shouldn’t pick her!” 

Hey, I have an idea, who gives a damn? Shows like ‘Survivor’ were interesting for the first two seasons, but I’m sorry, after season 832, it’s hard to get into a show that isn’t remotely close about surviving.  Daniel Tosh said it best in his stand up “We have a game show in our country called ‘Survivor.’ 

That’s a GAME in our country!

You can win a million dollars ‘surviving’ in a place where people already live. Someone asks ‘Excuse me, can we have some bread?’ No, we’re Americans, this is just a game to us.” 

It’s a wonder why other nations have these negative opinion of us, I mean, it’s not like we have shows that portray things like family life, love, humor, and other things in a negative/dysfunctional way.  Oh wait, that’s pretty much 90 some percent of television.

The last one that I’ll mention is “American Idol.” 

Oh no, your beloved ‘American Idol!”

I enjoy watching auditions to see the songs people are choosing to do, but when they have people that are blatantly terrible, ridiculous, and trying to be “different” just for the hell of it., that’s a red flag.  The show puts these people on after getting through many judge panels before Simon and company. 

The reason these people come in confidently, when they shouldn’t be, is because they have people telling them beforehand that they did great, knowing that they’ll embarrass themselves, but it’ll make great TV!  That’s pretty cheap, and pretty cold if you ask me. 

In the end, television currently is incredibly disappointing.  There are plenty of great programs and channels out there, but it seems that people are plugging in to these identical, rhetorical and awful shows. 

I don’t even have to mention shows like ‘Flavor of Love’ and ‘Teen Mom,’ do I?  But hey, whatever entertains you, entertains you, so who am I to judge?  Well, actually, I take that back, stop giving these god-awful shows a chance to keep on coming back for more.

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