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Thursday, March 16, 2017

WHEN TV SHOWS BECOME LESS ABOUT ENTERTAINMENT…

Now wouldn’t you think, from strictly a business standpoint, that those whose job it is to make television shows and movies, would want to make shows and movies that people actually wanted to watch and to, in the case of movies, be willing to pay ever higher ticket prices?  That they would be willing to put their addiction to political correctness aside just long enough to make a buck, because isn’t that really what it’s all about.  But oddly enough, that simply does not seem to be the case.  Because it is for some bizarre reason that these people have this need to lecture us to the point where it takes precedence over making a profit. 

As a for instance  ABC has ‘When We Rise’, Amazon has ‘Transparent’, and Netflix has ‘Orange is the New Black’, and though all of these show have been ‘critically acclaimed’, viewership is quite low.  And that’s likely because no one is interested in winding down after a long workday with a social justice lecture. Then there are shows like ABC’s multicultural/LGBT comedy Modern Family or Black-ish, which recently ran an anti-Trump episode.  Though these are some of the bigger shows for the network, they aren’t reaching a wider audience due to the politically correct topics.  So who is it that’s doing the ‘critically acclaiming’ I wonder?

But despite the low ratings and in the increasing disinterest in shows such as those mentioned, the major networks continue to be willing to charge full speed ahead with even more social justice programming which will, no doubt, provide to the American people even more opportunities to simply tune out.  Variety states, “The new wave of ‘woke’ broadcast shows is a response to the political and cultural moment, but also to long-simmering changes in the TV business... Across broadcast TV, programmers are confronting hot-button issues with an intensity not seen in decades.”  And it would seem that that intensity has been met with low ratings.

Apparently Fox is now set to premiere a new limited series, ‘Shots Fired’, on March 22, a show birthed during the aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. Creator Reggie Bythewood says the point of the series is to get a reaction out of people; like the same kind of “anger that we felt” during the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin trial or in Ferguson, where white officer Darren Wilson shot an “unarmed black teen.”  And in an attempt, I guess, to make some sort of a larger point, it’s in ‘Shots Fired’ that the races are reversed, this time we have a black cop shooting a white teenager. 

Sorry, but reversing the races won't change the circumstances.  Creators of this show seem headed down the same road as those liberal professors who were shocked by the results of their "experiment" to switch Trump and Hitlery's genders and replay the debates.  Ms. Blythewood lives in a world obsessed by race.  Most of us do not.  If the circumstances are that one person behaves like a thug and gets himself shot by the police, he won't get a lot of undeserved sympathy from us regardless of his skin color or the skin color of the cop, because we just see people, not race, and we judge the situation accordingly.

And so it’s at the beginning of every new television season that the wife and I will pick out a few potential shows that look interesting based on the previews that we’ve seen.  But rarely, if ever, do things progress beyond the first episode.  Sadly, we’re always disappointed.  And on those rare occasions where we actually do enjoy the show enough to keep watching, it’s usually by the midpoint of the season that things come off the tracks and we simply stop watching.  Because it’s only after we’ve been sucked in that the show begins preaching some leftwing cause.  So no one should be surprised when the ratings are in the toilet.

And since ratings don’t seem to be near as important as lecturing, I think we’ll keep our expectations rather low regarding the possibility of any watchable shows coming along anytime soon, especially if those like ABC’s entertainment president Channing Dungey have their way.  You see, it was she who said, “We have always wanted to try to tell stories that represent America in all of its shapes, sizes, colors — you name it. So that kind of programming is important to me. Whether it comes in the form of a limited series or a comedy or a drama. It was important to me yesterday. It will be important to me tomorrow.”

If you spending any time watching primetime television in America, whether it be on network television or on cable, you would come to recognize how it is that the creator and producers of many to today’s programming go well out of their way, and work very hard, to project the same false image.  That image being, of course, that it’s 25 percent of America that is LGBTQ.   But the truth is that that number is actually closer to 2.5 percent.  But it’s all nothing more than a continuing effort to normalize the not-normal.  Or, shall I say, to make the unacceptable appear to be more acceptable.  Either way it’s simply another form of propaganda.

And also, you’d think that America is 50 percent black and none of them are low-life scum.  And the few that are, are only that way because of whites. They are the divine race, incapable of sin.  Yup, and if they hadn't been aborting themselves out of existence since the 1970's, Blacks would likely be 25% of the population instead of just 13.  I’m always amazed by the number of those who so willingly expose their ignorance by basing their knowledge a particular issue, be it abortion, poverty, terrorism or, heaven forbid, politics, on something they saw on some television show.  And yet they have the nerve to get upset when you tell them they’re nuts.   

In a normal free market the companies that produce today’s television programming would quickly realize the folly of their ways and start producing shows that more Americans would actually want to watch.  Except that this is not a free market.  Clearly they’re is collusion going on between these production companies.  It’s all about winning the all-important culture war.  Straight is bad, gay is good, white is bad, black is good, women are good, men are bad, or just plain stupid, and on and on it goes. Breaking up the media giants would be a good first step, but what really needs to be done is to successfully discredit those responsible.

As is the case with NBC, and Saturday Night Live in particular, they seem to be on a mission to offend and anger as many Conservative (Trump supporting) viewers as they possibly can.  Yet, eyeballs watching the show translate into eyeballs watching the commercials that air during that program.  Succeed in pissing off and losing a third, or more, of your audience, and that's a big hit on your advertising revenue.  Liberals and Progressives, it would seem, are far more interested in spreading their Utopian Messages of Ethnic and Sexual diversity than they are in making a profit.  But then, liberals and logic go together like vampires and sunlight!

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