What IS wrong with American TV?

POSTED BY: Ruthie
UPDATED: Monday, August 10, 2026 16:40
VIEWED: 19611
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CHOZSUN

Thursday, July 15, 2004 7:14 PM

Along with The Wire, The Shield, Six Feet Under, Chappelle Show, Reno911 and Good Eats, I also love The Office (BBC) and Coupling (BBC) .

I cannot stand watching most American Sitcoms whereas British Sitcoms will always have a place in my heart (such as Black Adder and Chef come to mind).

It is evident by the number of Emmy nominations is that there is nothing wrong with American TV but rather Broadcast American TV. Cable TV Shows obvious rule the American Television. The only reason West Wing is semi-dominate is because it is created by the same guy who created the greatness of ABC's Sports Night (a must DVD own).

My TiVO does not record prime time broadcast television ever.

HEB

Thursday, July 15, 2004 7:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by ChozSun:
ABC's Sports Night (a must DVD own).

I keep hearing about this programme. What exactly is it, please and does anybody know if it's been shown/is available in the UK? I love the West Wing.

Thanks.

heb

Well, my sister's a ship... we had a
complicated childhood
.................
I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.W

MAUGWAI

Thursday, July 15, 2004 8:06 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by heb:
Quote:
Originally posted by ChozSun:
ABC's Sports Night (a must DVD own).

I keep hearing about this programme. What exactly is it, please and does anybody know if it's been shown/is available in the UK? I love the West Wing.

Thanks.

heb

Well, my sister's a ship... we had a
complicated childhood
.................
I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.W

I doubt Sports Night is shown in the UK, but you never know. It's available on DVD now, thank goodness. It was a show that aired on ABC for a couple of seasons. It never had good ratings, but ABC has a history of standing behind shows it loves, even when they don't pull in the big bucks, and they stood behind Sports Night as long as they could.

The story is about a sports TV network like ESPN and the crew that operates it. The show featured Felicity Huffman, Robert Goulet and a whole bunch of actors who have moved on to higher profile things. It was well written and funny in a mature way, so naturally the crowd that now watches The Simple Life didn't get it. Lots of sarcasm and below-the-radar jokes.

And sometimes I wonder if ABC had bought Angel or Firefly, would we be looking forward to more seasons right now?

"Dear diary, today I was pompous and my sister was crazy."

SOUPCATCHER

Thursday, July 15, 2004 8:07 PM

Ahhh. Sports Night. I love that show. I wish it had made it. DVDs are great.

The setting was a television studio that did a nightly sports wrap-up show (think sports center on espn). But the strength of the show was in the characters and their interactions (starting to sound familiar?).

Not sure if it was ever broadcast outside of north america.

editted to add: oops, looks like maugwai beat me to it

I shaved off my beard for you, devil woman!

CHANNAIN

Thursday, July 15, 2004 9:07 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Peace:
The network execs who say "This show's not performing so good right now, but it's a great story, so we'll carry for a while", are as rare as hen's teeth, partly because of the dunderheaded nature of most of them, as noted above, and also because any exec who made such a decision would be in serious danger of being fired by some dunderhead over him/her who doesn't know the show's intrinsically good, and only bows to the Great God Demographic (I think they sacrifice writers to this deity by the full of the moon).

Case in point - Brandon Braga who was the Michael Eisner of NBC while Quantum Leap was on. He loved the show, so it stayed on the air. It moved around just about every season, but made it through five seasons and gave us the first good time-travel science fiction since The Doctor.

By the way, anybody mind if I do a little monkey chair dance of joy that BBC is bringing back Doctor Who? For those of you not British who don't know, Doctor Who was bar none the single longest running science fiction series ever created - 25 seasons, I believe. The longest running series over here is 60 Minutes. That seem right to anyone?

We have art so as not to die of truth ~ Neitzsche
http://www.mnartists.org/artistHome.do?rid=7922

HEB

Thursday, July 15, 2004 9:56 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by maugwai:
Quote:
Originally posted by heb:
Quote:
Originally posted by ChozSun:
ABC's Sports Night (a must DVD own).

I keep hearing about this programme. What exactly is it, please and does anybody know if it's been shown/is available in the UK? I love the West Wing.

Thanks.

heb

Well, my sister's a ship... we had a
complicated childhood
.................
I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.W

I doubt Sports Night is shown in the UK, but you never know. It's available on DVD now, thank goodness. It was a show that aired on ABC for a couple of seasons. It never had good ratings, but ABC has a history of standing behind shows it loves, even when they don't pull in the big bucks, and they stood behind Sports Night as long as they could.

The story is about a sports TV network like ESPN and the crew that operates it. The show featured Felicity Huffman, Robert Goulet and a whole bunch of actors who have moved on to higher profile things. It was well written and funny in a mature way, so naturally the crowd that now watches The Simple Life didn't get it. Lots of sarcasm and below-the-radar jokes.

And sometimes I wonder if ABC had bought Angel or Firefly, would we be looking forward to more seasons right now?

"Dear diary, today I was pompous and my sister was crazy."

Thanks for your help. It looks like my multi-region dvd player will finally have a use for something other than firefly, as it doesn't seem to be out in the UK. I wonder if I can persuade my sister to go halves with me...

Well, my sister's a ship... we had a
complicated childhood
.................
I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.

MISGUIDED BY VOICES

Thursday, July 15, 2004 10:12 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SigmaNunki:
I've seen some UK productions and although it is obvious that the UK doesn't put as much money in their TV shows, in general they *are* better... *a lot* better.

Actually, I'll stand up for US TV here, as a Brit myself. We do the odd good thing, but the vast majority of our scheduling is reality TV or soap operas (a little above the class of Days of Our Lives, but not by much).

For every good drama we produce, there are several awful ones, and it is a rare day that a decent UK comedy show is produced. If we do produce a good series, such as Spooks (or MI5), its 6-8 episodes, as stated. Most of our best TV is made in the form of TV movies like Sharpe, or two-parters/mini-series like Cracker.

Compare that with, and I'm missing out a lot here:

Sopranos
The West Wing
ER
NYPD:Blue
Homicide
CSI
Six Feet Under
Law and Order
The Shield

The UK has nothing that I can think of that even gets close to the achievements of these series at their best - even take a show like Sopranos with 13 episodes; something the BBC or ITV could do, and there is nothing close.

Here's my optimists way of viewing the situation - because the schedules are flooded with reality shows, made on the cheap, they have more money to make the good drama series that get the publicity and the awards. You may have to look a little harder, but there is a heck of a lot of good stuff still out there.

"I threw up on your bed"

SIGMANUNKI

Friday, July 16, 2004 1:36 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Misguided By Voices:
For every good drama we produce, there are several awful ones,

Name me a country that doesn't have this track record. Canada has recently produced 4 new shows that came out last season and they were all extermely good and I was quite surprised by this.

All the shows that are out there now have been on for too long for my retained interest. ER is a perfect example of this. To keep people interested they have formed many relationships but as time progress they got to a soap opera point. That was a number of seasons ago which is when I stopped watching.

Also, there is rarely anything new that I like. Last season the only shows on that I wanted to watch were the mentioned Canadian ones. And today I went through the guide to search for something to watch, and the only things on are repeats of cancelled shows.

Today TV is in a sad state of affairs. Hopefully the execs will make some good decisions and get some non-reality TV on this coming season. I hope that this happens, but I don't think it will.

Quote:
Originally posted by Misguided By Voices:
Here's my optimists way of viewing the situation - because the schedules are flooded with reality shows, made on the cheap, they have more money to make the good drama series that get the publicity and the awards. You may have to look a little harder, but there is a heck of a lot of good stuff still out there.

I really think that you are deluding yourself. That extra money is going into the pockets of the execs as a bonus for creating such "good" (read money making) TV and the rest will be put towards make more of it to further increase there profits.

TV is created now for the lowest common denominator and since I can't watch that red neck crap there is little for me to watch. Quite frankly if I just had rabbit ears I'd be just as happy, which says a lot.

Hopefully this season something... anything... will slip through the cracks so I get something to watch if even for just a couple of eps (ie Wonderfalls).

----
"Canada being mad at you is like Mr. Rogers throwing a brick through your window." -Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

CGREALMS

Friday, July 16, 2004 3:21 AM

I can think of a number of decent shows. "Everwood" is one of the best family dramas ever made, and one of the few multi-generational genres that never loses its focus on any of the generations.

"Smallville" has its cheesy moments, but at it's best (episodes like "Insurgence," "Rosetta," "Perry," "Relic," and "Memoria") is some of the most epic stuff to grace TV in a while.

"Scrubs" sets the standard for dramedy, able to ease from cheap laughs to real poignancy with effortless ease. I can recall the last show that walked this tightrope so effectively.

"Joan of Arcadia" is another spectacular family drama which explores issues without forcing a point of view down the viewer's throat. The season finale was one of the greatest hours of what science fiction could be on television that I've ever seen.

And "Arrested Development" proves that a great, inventive, sophisticated comedy can flourish on network television. "Arrested" is a great half-hour of comedy, and cable's brightest efforts (such as the hilarious "Curb Your Enthusiasm") don't come close.

So good television is definitely still out there. And there's a number of promising shows on the horizons for the upcoming season.

CLEANER

Friday, July 16, 2004 3:49 AM

Major problem with American TV is that the execs look at it as a closed market, completely discounting things siuch as overseas airing and DVD sales from the equation of wether to keep a show running.

If they are only interested in the quick bucks they should provide online services to download TV. A week after the show has aired in the US the rest of the world should be able to pay say US$10 to download the episode off a fast server. The format could easily be made to be licensed only to the Media player on the computer its downloaded onto to prevent easy illegal distribution.

"If wishes were horses we'd all be eating steak!!!"

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