by Measle

Introduction:

Last General Election we were a hair away from having our first woman President.  It’s only a matter of time.  The halls of power that were inaccessible to women in the past have been laid bare to them.  We have women CEOs.  Astronauts, professors, athletes, even soldiers.  Is there anything left for them to conquer?  At a glance, you would probably say “no”.  However there is one last bastion of maledom that has not been besieged by the fairer sex.  The world of low-brow entertainment.  In the past women have been content to not indulge in the basest of entertainment.  They would gladly eschew football for the theater.  Rasslin and Monster Trucks for period pieces.  Skinemax movies for art exhibits.  Sure you always had cool chicks that would catch this kind of entertainment WITH their man.  But seldom do women of their own volition go in for this sort of thing.  Until now.  And the price is huge.  The soul of the ONE channel where you could find the best of Television from the last 50 years is going down for the count.  I only hope it’s not too late to save it.

The channel of course is TVLand.  If you want to watch a sit-com that came out before Seinfeld, this was pretty much your only choice.  All of the other stations that run syndicated shows, UPN, WB, TBS, etc are content to all run the same shows.  Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, The King of Queens, Family Guy, etc.  These are good shows, but there’s so much more out there.  The same is true for dramas.  IF you want to catch a good Crime Drama that predates the CSI and Law and Order franchises, TVLand was pretty much your only choice.

I mentioned TVLand Prime earlier.  This of course refers to their new brand of Prime Time programming…. The most coveted time slots on any channel.  So what do we get in TVLand Prime?  Well, like I mentioned above, for the last 6 months or so it’s been at least three hours of Roseanne every night.  They’ve cycled through the entire series several times since they landed the show.  But stand fast, they just recently acquired Home Improvement…. And hang on…. Everybody Loves Raymond is coming!!!!  Oh yayz.  So if you don’t get enough Raymond on TBS, WB, UPN and your various local affiliates, you can watch it in lieu of I Dream of Jeannie or The Jeffersons, which you can’t find anywhere else.  Now take a look at the shows (that are not original content type shows) and tell me if you see a running theme.  Roseanne.  Home Improvement.  Everybody Loves Raymond.  The Cosby Show.  If you guessed they all feature male protagonists that have seemingly made one good choice in their miserable lives, which was landing a bitchy spouse that tells them how to behave, you would be correct.  The shows are more or less the same damn formula…. Now just get us World According to Jim and the circle of lame will be complete.  Women are the smart ones and the driving force behind any man’s success.  We fucking get it.

A)     Peaked far too early in their life and desperately need to relive their glory days.  Or

B)      Have yet to peak at all.  Losers then and losers now.  These people need to get the acceptance of Group A

C)      Those people who were absolute bastards in high school and are still absolute bastards.

Can someone tell me who the fuck I’m supposed to root for?  Two sets of losers, and one set of assholes.  It’s probably telling that all the people on the show are single as well, presumably so they can all “hook up” together!  ZOMG!  They did it in the hot tub!  There’s nothing wrong being single later in life, but for all of them to be single?  Yeah, I can’t wait to see what happens with such high caliber folk.  I think the worst of the lot though is group B; those people that seek the approval of people that were the shit 20 fucking years ago?  Oh, the late-blooming mousy chick wants to fuck the quarterback, even though he’s balding and paunchy, just because he was cool as a kid?  That’s the most pathetic case of starfucking I’ve ever heard of.  Fuck, at least Peggy Bundy married Al when he was still the shit, not 20 years later.  My apologies to the many cool girls out there, but this is the kind of show that mostly appeals to women with shitty taste.  What dude is going to give a shit if the Player settles down, or the Bully gets redemption?  We simply don’t give a shit. The next reality show coming down the pike is about getting a second chance with your first love.  This kind of bullshit is the reason I can’t watch Perry Mason or Kojak on TV?

Look, I don’t know why they’re changing their format.  Could be they weren’t making any money.  Could be they were making money but they wanted to make more.  Could be some bean counter is telling them they’re not tracking well with 18-34 year old women.  I don’t really fucking care.  They were one of the few channels where you could catch classic programming.  Now they’re becoming just like every other cable station out there.  My hope is that fans of classic TV shows will not take to being condescended to.  They’ve moved all the classic shows to shitty time spots, and they continue to recycle the same classic shows they do show instead of acquiring any new ones.  They’re daring us to leave, so leave.  Let them have Roseanne, low-brow reality shows and Date Flicks.  They want to have their cake and eat it too.  Don’t let them do that.  The TVLand we once loved is gone.  If we ever want to see it back, we need to walk away now.  Continuing to support what classic shows they do run is only telling them they’re doing the right thing.    I’m not some guy wanting to live in the past….many of these shows originally aired a long time before I was born.  All I want is for ONE of the channels out of the hundreds I have to dedicate itself to showing the best of Television’s storied history, not another one dedicated to bringing us the worst of its present.

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