It routinely runs 3-4 minutes over and I have to fast forward through the nonsense in order to get to Fringe.

It took a few times of this occurring before I finally set up my Fringe recording to record an extra 15 minutes.

I don’t view it as a “talent contest” at all. It is a popularity contest plain and simple. Sanjaya only lasted as long as he did because people felt sorry for him when in reality he sings like a dying wildebeest! This should not be allowed to happen.

Nick C, Bill and/or Robert, I have heard rumors that DWTS has discussed moving to Tuesday/Wednesday nights because it smells blood in the water (i.e.: the supposed fight between Paula and Kara; Simon thinking about jumping ship, etc.). Have you heard this?

If there has already been discussion about this I apologize.

Now I do. All of reality TV is stupid. I’m not saying that in a generally derogatory way. I mean literally it is for people with 2 digit IQs. The most recent example is this show I don’t remember the name of. The viewers vote each week on which of 2 jobs some dumb chick from NY will do for the next week. The vote was closed 2 days before the show aired. The person I talked to was actually voting based on what they want her to do. They don’t realize that it takes much more than two days to shoot and edit a show, even a reality one. And thus, this woman already did both of them! The voting doesn’t effect this woman in any way.

In general I don’t like any show that treats it’s audience like idiots. Sitcoms are nearly as bad as reality shows. There have been a few good ones, 70’s show, 3rd rock, almost all the rest are crap. Yes even Friends and Seinfeld.

Full disclosure: I can’t stand reality TV shows and the only one I will give an exception to is Amazing Race. Another full disclosure, I haven’t seen an episode of Amazing Race in 3 or 4 years.

On another note,I agree with those who say that reality tv helps kill lots of quality tv. That doesn’t mean that all scripted tv is quality, but that there are shows that all of us like (though it’s not always the same one)that could be canceled in part because of America’s new trend towards voyeurism.

It really doesn’t build suspense about the competition when they go on a commercial break.

These past two seasons when they asked the viewers to call in their choices after they show a clip of the “live” performance, they were really calling about their REHEARSAL performances.

Finally, if you want to text in your choice, make it a WIDER swath of texters. Not everyone has AT&T, which left a lot of people without it in the cold.

I don’t happen to enjoy baseball or basketball – its like watching paint dry to me — and yet many viewers are invested in the outcomes of these games and series. I’m not so pretentious that I think they’re morons because they care and I don’t.

That’s American Idol. A bunch of nobodies thinking they’ll be the next Michael Jackson, international singing sensation, by doing nothing but going to their local convention center on a tryout day and waiting for 10 hours in line.

But then again… I also hate Facebook, Myspace, and any sort of social event that makes people think that other people care at all what they do in their life. If these people had used AIM 10 years ago, or discussed things in internet forums for more than a week, they’d have realized long ago: No one cares.

Except in the case of American Idol… apparently people do care. Which disappoints me, because Grandmas and Mothers-In-Law and morons who can’t comprehend what happens in LOST every week without having 37 documentaries created about it are apparently dictating the direction of TV in this country.

Watching American Idol contributes to the declining intelligence in the world today.

Boris, if you’re still reading this thread, read this entry on the Flynn effect.

IQ scores are re-normalized periodically, so today’s 100 is not equivalent to a 100 in 1930.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

As I said earlier, a scripted show needs to be compelling enough so that it can handle the competition no matter what it is. But I do think the networks should stop trying to compete against competition shows with fiction shows. They should know by now that it’s extremely difficult and can cause shows that might be perfectly profitable in another time slot to get clobbered. Makes no sense to me. If a network can’t come up with a competition show to match some other show in a given time slot, they might as well just give up that time slot all together rather than “sacrifice” a good fiction show in a vain effort to derail the competition show.

Some fiction shows this season have done moderately well against competition shows, but in general it’s a bad idea to schedule that way.

Unscripted, you must be f–king kidding. The low life producers made that titled up themselves so they could avoided paying a living wage to the poor desperate people who work for them.

When I see the success of AI type of show, I think I am living in the United States of Dumbfuckstand.

Sorry Guys this subject( Unscripted) really tick’s me off.

I watch a variety of shows from drama’s like Damages, comedies like Better Off Ted and Chuck to Sci-fi shows like Fringe or supernatural shows like Supernatural. The fact that those shows don’t all get stellar ratings is not all Idols fault. a lot of it has to do with the advertising provided by their network, their time slot etc. Proper hype and scheduling count as much as who your competition is.

Even without Idol there will always be a show that dominates other more deserving shows. I was never a fan of Seinfeld but that was a ratings powerhouse in its day and it killed other shows like Idol does. Even if Idol did not exist other shows will always threaten our favorites.

“And as one my old mentors, Dr. Tim Leary, used to say: ‘Never trust anyone who comes on emotional.’”

The ship will be ours and you got to roll with it!
And though your master’s head’s blown off you got to go with it!

Just by the by, did comet Hyakutake manage to get through any follow-ups to the Starseed transmission?

In my case, however, I do pick the shows I watch based on their premises and the likelihood of their engaging me in a more conceptual sense – and possibly even a philosophical sense – than an emotional sense. I’ve always done that – with movies, books and even comic books. That’s why I gravitate more toward sci-fi, espionage, adventure media than comedic material. There’s more “meat” to it than your average family drama or romantic drama or comedy.

Which is not to say I don’t like getting a big emotional response from media. Take “V for Vendetta”, for instance. My primary interest is in the conceptual content of the movie. But the scene where Evey loses her fear is one of the most emotional moments I’ve ever had in watching a movie. It brings me to tears every time. But I’m completely incapable of getting emotional over who wins the SuperBowl.

It’s the difference between sirloin and luncheon meat. Competition shows are luncheon meat for the brain.

I guess the difference is that I don’t look to TV for philosophical components. I usually turn to books for that. Given censors, sponsor sensibilities, network sensibilities etc you will never get a TV show along the lines of books like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring or Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Because of the above named factors everything on network TV will be watered down to an extent.

Also i just finished law school and during that time I had very little free time and I wanted to be entertained in what time I did have. A lot of people get enough mental stimulation from other more comprehensive sources and just don’t look to TV for that.

I’ll take a scripted hour first, mind you . . . .

When I say talent shows are entertainment, I don’t mean it in the same sense of shows like comedies or dramas. I mean they’re entertainment in a social sense. Some people may tune in just to hear talent perform, but others are tuning in for the competitive aspects, which are absent in scripted shows. That’s not engaging the brain.

“Unless all you watch are documentaries every scripted show is mere entertainment aimed at attaching to an emotional response.”

Not quite.

I tend not to like comedy shows either, partly because they don’t (usually) engage the brain. Nothing wrong with laughing at jokes, though.

But talent shows and game shows are basically like sports – they’re purely competitive. They engage the chimpanzee side of the human brain, not the cognitive side. Any scripted drama is going to engage the brain at least somewhat because you have to make judgments about what’s happening and what it means and what might happen next and how it relates to one’s own life (if only subconsciously). With a competition show, not so much.

There really is a reason to say that competition shows – talent shows, game shows, and sports – are somewhat less conceptual than dramas, if not comedies. Comedies can be conceptual depending on the concepts involved in the premise and the execution. But dramas are inherently more conceptual than competition shows. Mind you, not all dramas are “intellectual” in the sense of requiring intense thought, obviously. But dramas require significant conceptual processing compared to just watching a competition.

Bottom line: It’s easier and less brain taxing to watch any kind of competition than it is to watch a drama. And that doesn’t exclude all the effort that goes into sports kibitzing. While there’s a lot of analysis that goes into deciding who is more likely to win a game – or a talent contest or a “reality” show – it has little to do with one’s personal situation. A comedy or drama allows people to consider the human condition and how it applies to them. A competition show really doesn’t to the same degree.

This is not to say that competition shows “dumb down America” or anything. If anything, it’s the other way around. The educational system and the society has dumbed down, and the TV fare is the result, not the cause.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that the difference between competition shows and scripted shows is the philosophical component. Scripted shows can – if not always do – engage the “examined life” concept, whereas competition shows really don’t. To some degree, of course, it depends on the individual. It’s not just an emotional response that a scripted show can produce in a viewer, it’s a conceptual response. But competition shows aren’t intended to stimulate that response in a viewer. They are designed more to elicit an emotional response.

And as one my old mentors, Dr. Tim Leary, used to say: “Never trust anyone who comes on emotional.”