[lbo-talk] Warm summers or dark ages?/ Why not the best forthe working class ?

[Carl Remick]

>From: <james at communistbanker.com>
>
>CB: "Great televisions shows ? We could do without 9/10ths of them
>probably."
>
>JG: There's certainly room for improvement, but I think that we are in
>a golden age of TV at the moment - The Sopranos, etc. But I do agree
>with Lord Reith, former director general of the BBC - "Don't give the
>people what they want, give them something better."

That "etc." is misleading; The Sopranos is one-of-a-kind brilliant.  Charles 
is right that the vast majority of all TV programming today is dreck -- 
probably even worse than the televised mind-rot of the 'fifties because 
there is so much of it.  Worst of all, the US Public Broadcasting System has 
been defunded and hollowed out -- my local PBS affiliate devotes its 
Saturday evenings to broadcasting fare like reruns of the Lawrence Welk Show 
from 40 years ago.

BTW, Lord Reith must be spinning turbine-like in his grave if The Office is 
at all representative of the BBC's current programming innovation.  I tried 
watching this lauded series a couple of times and found it witless, not -- 
as claimed -- a satire of witlessness.  Of course, most of what's shown here 
on BBC-America either is decades old or, if current, is god-awful 
home-makeover programming, so I don't know if the BBC is just saving its 
best stuff for UK viewership.

But I would say that as "golden ages" go, TV today is mainly brass.

Carl