Week 6: Commercial Media

Commercial Media is awful.
I cannot stand watching any type of morning show and they are completely taking over the television. You used to be able to escape them on the weekends but now that is all that is on TV on a Saturday or a Sunday morning. You used to be able to turn the TV on to some ridiculously awful kids show (which although they are awful can be a lot of fun) as part of something like Saturday Disney but now it's just a bunch of fake people with a heap of make-up, talking to other people with a heap of make-up, smiling with their white teeth and botox at the camera and talking about a whole bunch of nothing. They fail to look like real human beings and their fake conversation does nothing to help, with their corny jokes and puns that they chuckle to themselves about. After talking about something for about a minute they decide that it's time to throw some really crap product at you and for the next half hour you have to watch some poor person promote the latest vacumm cleaner or facial product. It's awful.

And evening television is even worse. The shows like A Current Affair and Today Tonight. It's mind-numbingly boring to watch not to mention that you feel like you are losing brain cells watching it.And if that's not bad enough, the show is half advertising. SO after sitting through about 5-10mins of the most boring story about women who didn't think that breast implants would effect their children whilst breast feeding or a story about a new bra or a conspiracy to do with some idiot being scammed, then you have to sit through the add-break which is normally longer than the story itself. And all the adds have such annoying voices and sometimes you can even see that they have changed the voice of the person on the add as the dubbing is either really bad or you can just tell something is not right. Why do people suffer watching TV at all? If you aren't watching a morning show or a today tonight show then you are watching adds, or an awful reality TV show like Big Brother or Border Security or something about a vet, a life saver or an emergency room. Scripted television can sometimes be even worse. You either get repeats of some badly written drama or comedy (Friends excepted), normally always American or a series that has been running far too long and is now long past it's expiry date (Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives). I don't have pay TV but I have friends that do and it's exactly the same story. There is never anything decent on to watch and there are hundreds of channels (My friend is a huge fan of Jersy Shore which I believe is the worst show that has ever made it on to our screens and called entertainment. Why would you want to watch those people?).

And then all the good shows that are made; like Joss Whedon's Firefly, or Bryan Fuller's Pushing Daisies, are cancelled after one or two seasons because apparently good writing and great characters can't last in the commercial world (although Buffy the Vampire Slayer got a very decent run). It's so disappointing. Scripted shows barely get a chance in this world of reality TV. Unique shows are wiped off the face of the earth before they can ever reach their full potential and before people even get a chance to see how great they are. I do hope that shows like Community, and Game of Thrones survive this world where Bones gets a million seasons but not Firefly is cancelled before it gets a proper first season. Commercial media, what have you done to this world?