For years, the defenders of television have argued that the networks are only giving the people what they want. That might be true. But so is the Medellin cartel.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I think that the problem with network television is that they cling to the whole business model like they are clinging to the side of a cliff.
When you're young, you look at television and think, there's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want.
In day-to-day commerce, television is not so much interested in the business of communications as in the business of delivering audiences to advertisers. People are the merchandise, not the shows. The shows are merely the bait.
Television enjoys a de facto monopoly on what goes into the heads of a significant part of the population and what they think.
Television is a powerful medium that has to be used for something better than sitcoms and police shows. On the other hand, if you don't recognize the forces that play on what people watch and what they don't then you're a fool and you should be in a different business.
Television networks are a lot like automobile manufacturers or anyone else who's in commerce. If something out there catches on with the public... I guess you can call it 'market research.'
TV producers want ratings and are willing to do nearly anything to get them. They gin up artificial conflicts and create an urgency for even the most minor of economic data points.
I actually think there's a potential, a crazy potential, that network TV could become something valuable and worthwhile, just because of fear on the part of the networks.
Television contracts the imagination and radio expands it.
Network television has been attempting to lure viewers for years with its low-interest programming only to have those viewers discover later that their brains are bankrupt.
No opposing quotes found.