Insulting TV Programming

I grew up watching a ton of TV shows. I've seen every episode of MASH, Brady Bunch, and Gilligan's Island. I regularly watched Happy Days, Fantasy Island, the Love Boat, Charlies Angles, Dukes of Hazzard, The Incredible Hulk, Starsky and Hutch,The Jeffersons, Magnum PI, and MTV when they actually used to play music videos.

Over time I was able break my addiction to watching TV. I have not had cable for nearly 15 years and don't have any TV reception so the only time I watch television programs is when I look them up on Netflix. Once or twice a year I travel and end up sitting in a hotel room with time to kill and I usually end up turning on the TV and returning like a dog to it's vomit. I should know better. Here are some of my latest insights after flipping through channels for way too long over the weekend.

I'm sure there are some quality programs on TV but they are few and far between. Please don't take offense with the comments that follow if I describe one of your favorite shows but I can't but help share some of these observations. First of all I think there are too many channels. While flipping through channels I would just pass ones like QVC, CSPAN, the weather channel, etc. but there was still so many lame programs

I was shocked to see how many channels have dedicated programming for murder mystery stories about spouses who kill each other and get caught ten years later. I can not believe how many investigative reports featured a mix of CSI, law enforcement, court room action, and investigative reports which take an hour to come to the conclusion that a husband or wife killed their significant other due to in affair or for insurance money.

If you want to add more depression to the abundance of murder shows you can watch reality TV shows about prisons. One of these shows featured regular people who go under cover and act like a prisoner to gain information for the warden. I was really surprised when some of the prisoners guessed who the mole was. Could it possibly be they guessed the guy who showed up to prison with a camera crew?

There are many home improvement shows which are actually kind of uplifting and fun but they still follow the standard insulting reality show formula of having 30 minutes of actual content mixed with 20 minutes of commercials combined with the last 10 minutes which is the worst part...showing the same scenes 3 or 4 times as a preview before and after commercials and with their summaries and recaps throughout the program. It is so frustrating when they keep rewinding the content and showing the same snippets over and over. You can catch any of these shows for just the last 20 minutes and not miss a thing since it will all be reviewed for you over and over again. PLEASE STOP DOING THAT!

Then there were all the sports commentary shows, commercials, and infomercials. I have concluded that TV programming is catered to idiots and we must be a country of idiots since we lick the stuff up. That includes this idiot who can go for hours clicking through channels and watching mind numbing crap for way too long.