Consensius: Nobody Cares About the WGA (Jan 29, 2008)

In letters posted on sandiegoradionews.com, most of the readers are sports fans.

In replies posted at my blog on The Mad Music Archive, most of the readers are fans of the geek culture.

Neither of the two places I posted my commentary on the WGA writer's strike had replies from the other audiences who are depressed because there are no new episodes of Grey's Anatomy or Desperate Housewives being produced.

Maybe it's because I don't have any female fans in a traditional sense.

Several readers by e-mail and blog replies indicated that whatever the writers of the TV shows are working or not, TV series on broadcast television is no longer a part of their daily lives, pure and simple.

A scattered few are still watching some of them, but to them, it's no big deal if they're not on the air in first runs. Truth is, unlike the last time the writers strike happened, all we had were CDs, cassettes, radio (before Clear Channel ruined it for all of us), a couple of dozen cable channels, about four pay channels, videogames, books, and shows on VHS tape. People do go out and do other things instead of waiting until the writers stop striking and return to writing new episodes of some shows that are nowadays aimed at people who don't have a penis.

Today, in 2008, we have cell phones that can do everything I suppose, except getting Scotty to beam them up into the Starship Enterprise, we have people who have stored tens of thousands of mp3s or downloaded thousands of You Tube videos on their terabyte hard drives, we have satellite radio, Internet radio, thousands of cable and pay channels, HD radio, portable podcasts, HDTV sub channels, as well as CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray, HD DVD, and videogames. For some of us elders, we still have huge collections of LPs, 8-tracks, cassettes, VHS, Beta, and our old Atari 2600 videogame systems.

The point is this: the WGA writers don't matter anymore in this day and age of multiple ways to entertain yourself. There's just so much competetion here that once people quit watching the TV shows on the broadcast networks, and begin with something else, and they enjoy it better than whatever show that they were hooked on watching, they'll never go back to watching their shows again. They'll reevaulate the time they've spent watching first runs of "According To Jim" and conclude that the show was really a waste of their time; they'll also regret that they never thought of doing something with their free time other than watching network television.

In my humble opinion, and I need to state that beforehand, the decline of prime-time television can be traced to the introduction of people meters, and the networks becoming fixated with getting huge numbers for the 18-49 age group, rather than to get ratings for people aged 50 and older. As cable penetration increased, and the males decided to watch them for Discovery, History, ESPN, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, and other networks, the broadcast networks decided that the only way to stop the erosion is to program for the one demographic that is too poor to afford the alternatives: women 18-49.

The women age groups may be too poor to afford the kinds of entertainment in mass that the men can afford, but they are a lucrative age group to program for as they like to spend the money their husbands make. The advertisers respond with mostly female-aimed products such as hair care, feminine hygiene, perfume, jewelry, fashions, cosmetics, and shoes with fairly good-looking models showing the products off. Turn on a female-aimed show such as Ugly Betty or Gossip Girl and count how many of the female-aimed ads that you see. Count how many of the ads are aimed at men such as big trucks, masculine hygiene, home improvement shops, and other similar products. Not many, right? Turn on ESPN and those other cable channels the men watch and you'll see very few if any products aimed solely for the females. When was the last time you saw an ad for Massengill on Sports Center?

To advertise to the women on free network television, the networks have to program mostly female-friendly fare. They air shows with all females as principal cast members, or as female leads. That's what many of the WGA writers are writing for nowadays: women. They're not writing shows for men anymore. No more shows like The Rat Patrol, Hogan's Heroes, Bonanza, The FBI, NYPD Blue, or other kinds of ideas that men enjoy. There's a few that men can enjoy like Family Guy, 24, and Prison Break, all on Fox, which seems to be the last bastion for prime-time programming for males, but they still have to aim the shows so that the females will watch as well.

Many of the respondents of my commentary enjoy watching videos on the Internet, listening to Internet radio stations, watching hockey and other major sports, enjoying podcasts, producing their own podcasts, watching nature and history shows, watching movies, watching private video collections, and other stuff. To them, they're glad that the broadcast networks have not come up with ideas to persuade them to give up what they're doing in favor of watching a prime-time show.

Let me tell you my story. Back in 1980, when the actors union went on strike, and stopped making new TV shows, and first-run shows for the 1980-81 season didn't show up until late October, I decided to take a community college course in prime-time, something that I never done before. I took a computer class on Monday night, which was the only night it was available, and to my disbelief, it was on opposite the time Monday Night Football was on. The rest of the week, there was the radio to listen to what was then known as progressive rock instead of watching reruns of cancelled shows. I had cassettes of songs I taped off of the radio and I listened to those. Aside of that, that was it. The actors strike taught me that I don't need them to entertain me.

The 1980-81 season finally arrived and I watched whatever my favorites came back, but many of the new shows during the season were dismally bad in quality. There were a few new shows like Hill St. Blues and Magnum P.I. that were okay, but a lot of the ideas were getting bad as the years wore on as sitcoms became dumber, the action shows began getting more female-aimed (think Remingston Steele and Cagney & Lacey), and my older favorites grew tiresome beyond their welcome (Happy Days lasted 11 seasons, six too long). The 1980s were the beginning of the end of me watching prime-time television en masse, and as the years wore on, I watched fewer and fewer new shows that I could watch, as many of them were basically not watchable, most of them were popular.

Sure, I picked up some shows along the way such as Cheers, Cosby Show, Night Court, Miami Vice, Newhart, and for reasons that can't be explained, The Facts of Life, but if it weren't for the launch of Fox TV, I would have watched fewer hours of prime-time shows. Fox lanched with probably the greatest sitcom ever: Married...With Children, as well as coming up with The Simpsons, In Living Color, Beverly Hills 90210, Parker Lewis, Melrose Place, King of The Hill, Futurama, Family Guy, and the one show that is mostly for the females, American Idol. If anything, Fox helped keep the prime-time era on the map, though to many people, it's just there, people are aware of prime-time television, but after sampling the show descriptions, prime-time television isn't for them.

As the years wore on, going from one millenium to another, as my favorites bit the dust, time was freed up to enjoy the Internet and satellite radio. Nowadays, the only appointment network TV shows for me are the Fox cartoon lineup on Sunday nights. When those are gone, so am I.

Since the 1992-93 season, 15 years ago, I watched fewer series in full than all of the series combined that began before that season. I was hooked on TV during the late 70s, but today, we're really at the nadir of the era of prime-time television in its lifetime. The writers' strike is being greeted with a ho-hum response because few people care about whatever mundane ideas they're coming up with. Deal or No Deal is having weeks of multiple million dollar briefcases per game instead of just one million dollar briefcase. American Gladiators has returned. Conan O'Brien is out of ideas and keeps recycling the same ideas for days. His show is a bore, and he's the one that will take over hosting duties of The Tonight Show? Now NBC is really in trouble!

So to conclude, from the fans of other stuff to the WGA writer's strike: you don't matter to us anymore.