Uncomfortable TV

[Murthy Yenamandra]

Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt writes, among other things:
> IS there a marked improvement in US TV since cable, as davemarc recently 
> (may have) suggested? Or is Murphy Brown (and shows like The Simpsons) 
> as 'uncomfortable' as it gets? 

The short answer to the (second) question is yes. Any thing really
subversive, if it gets a chance at all on TV, is pretty short lived.
While some people are encouraged by any little sign of improvement, the
essential point of TV is to provide the expected - so something like
_The Simpsons_, while it may be somewhat different in an offbeat
fashion (and usually quite enjoyable), is more or less assimilated into
the expected fare (and watched ten times on Fox TV reruns). The most
one can hope for is something entertaining, which isn't as easy as it
seems (try and watch the last few painful seasons of _Murphy Brown_).

The only effect of cable, as far as I can see, is to split the expected
fare into zillion little market segments ("All _Taxi_ all the time!").

Murthy

-- 
Murthy Yenamandra, Dept of CompSci, U of Minnesota. Email: yenamand at cs.umn.edu
   "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the
    swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the
    wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour  
    to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all ..."