I’m one of the lowbrows who comes home tired from work, catches up on the latest craziness in the news, and then is not in the mood for anything tragic. I tried several times to watch Succession, but the characters were such awful people that I couldn’t become interested in them, or care what happened to them. I need to like at least one character.
I know it makes sense for them financially but now I’ll probably have to pay more for HBO so I can have a bunch of Disney productions I never wanted. It slowly creeps back toward being cable yet again.
I watched The Last Stand. It was amusing at times, but it's essentially gun porn. So much violence! I remember when people were shocked by that. Now it's everywhere and nobody bats an eyelash.
I'm not a Puritan, but the constant glorification of violence isn't a good thing.
But at what cost? It desensitizes people to violence and feeds into the gun culture that guns are necessary and good.
I was just reading the report of a man shot and killed yesterday when he answered the door to police who were responding to the wrong address on a domestic violence call. It was in the middle of the night and he had grabbed his handgun before answering the door. He no doubt believed it made him safer. It didn't.
Some people need guns for personal safety but that is a small minority. It may make for interesting viewing and good box office sales or streaming hits but I don't think it is good for society. Just my opinion.
I'll show myself out now. It's a beautiful day. Temps in the 80's here. Gonna sit on the front porch and yell at the neighbor kids to get off my lawn. :)
Count me as on of the rural's who will not keep subscribing to MAX if it stops doing excellence. Reality TV disgusts me and I can't stand watching stupid. I stopped TLC and Discovery when they went the most programming is reality tv b.s. Prime video is a nightmare because it's all bait and switch. Offerings are all about sucking you into some ad-based nightmare. It used to be easy finding something on Prime to watch but not anymore. My go to streaming services are HBOMax and Netflix. I will not keep paying HBO to watch idiocy. As to the analogy that people coming home don't want to watch something good, could it perhaps be that they dumbed down their audience with idiocy and too many people are forgetting what good entertainment is?
No quibble with the article, but I get annoyed at the phrase coastal elites. In fact if you go to most states you will find a city where the latte drinkers live and work. So in Ohio you can visit Dayton and then see Wright State University - a behemoth with a medical school etc (i taught there in 1977-78.) So yes most folks apparently want Dr Pimple Popper but the educated zoom meet-ers are scattered across the US. And by the way the low brow live along to coasts.
I saw the first two hours of MTV when it went live. I didn’t like it, and never watched it again.
I was a big Tull fan still (I play flute) and one of the videos was Aqualung. It seemed to be at half speed. I’d seen it in concert four times; the first was what inspired me to become a musician.
I decided to pass on the whole music video thing. No regrets.
Also a huge Tull fan. I watched early MTV.. well, I LISDTENED to early MTV--there wasn't actually much to watch. It was something that ran in the background.
Once they started moving away from primarily music, I stopped.
I'll be sticking with them because they have the rights to my men's and women's national team games but really don't want the price to go up for Discovery crap. Its sad for me to say that too because I used to like Discovery (the channel) before they went MTV's route and completely abandoned their original type of content for reality TV.
I grew up loving Discovery. It's so alien to realize that they are, in fact, a lowest common denominator network a la HGTV. Is Animal Planet even still a thing?
The problem isn't so much one app that has everything as it is no way within the app to sort out the wheat from the chaff. (And what constitutes wheat and chaff is different for every viewer.)
I find it fascinating that this is happening in the almost-immediate wake of the general retail business discovering that they cannot survive as all-things-to-all-people. Bed, Bath, and Beyond is going bankrupt; Kohl’s is trying to reposition as a “lifestyle” store with in-store Sephora departments (which didn’t help J.C.Penney’s) and everyone else is closing stores. Tell me that the better streaming comparison is Amazon, but even it is trying to segment-offering me(for one) a new business membership, a Kindle loyalty club beta, special checkout options at Whole Foods, and who knows what’s coming next week. It FEELS as though there is an entire generation of executives who barely understand their businesses-or perhaps business. The whole thing about costs, profits, products, customers and the complex relationships among those things. As if they got all tangled up in the glitz and glamour of flashy trendy products and stock options to support flashy lifestyles. . . . a high churn influencer disposable economy. Maybe it was ZIRP; maybe it’s the fundamental amorphousness of a world so dominated by onlineness. But it feels to me as though we have entered a phase that is likely to be especially weird and probably short-lived as decision-makers learn how to make economically based decisions. Don’t jump in to overpay for what you don’t really want: it’ll probably all change in a year anyway!
And, I think, comp packages based on stock options/price, which may have reified the fascination with volume (account numbers) over profits and related cost economics.
Ah, Dr. Pimple Popper. Along with 1000 Pound Sisters and other notables like Love After Lock-up, America shows how far it has fallen down the rabbit hole.
On a related note about rabbit holes, the new series named after bunny burrows is most excellent! Kiefer is his usual intense, tortured self, while Charles Dance is just delightful.
Back around 1984 I stopped watching for a month; no special reason, I think I was busy, but then when I tried to "see what's on" I found myself fidgeting and squirming, unable to focus on it, annoyed by the dumb jokes. With a few exceptions like Breaking Bad I haven't watched TV since, almost 40 years, and I watched those on a computer.
this is like when I'm at the gym and the History Channel is on and there's a 100% chance it's either Pawn Stars (which, at least I guess, *tries* to deal with some history) or some variation on "Aliens are real and they did some weird stuff, man."
Classic comedy is priceless and HARD!! A lot of the early TV stars had spent years honing their crafts, and it showed in performances so smooth we took them for granted until we saw what mindless and tawdry freak shows would look like!! The Groundlings have always been with us, but Shakespeare didn’t write exclusively for them; he wrote for us all. Which, I shudder to think, might support your point about us going down the rabbit hole!!
Honestly, most Americans have always wanted mindless entertainment. Silly comic strips (ask your parents if you don’t know what they are), silly TV shows (Jack Benny, anyone?), on and on. We have always had a significant population of who can’t, or don’t want to, think.
I'm old as dirt. I loved comic strips. George Burns and Gracie Allen were genius. Mindless entertainment has it's place. Love After Lock-up and 1000 pound sisters is a different breed.
I make a point of never consuming anything as entertainment. If it doesn’t stimulate my mind, I don’t want it. No television for almost 40 years, nothing more derivative than science fiction. I do like some of the series like Breaking Bad and Foundation, the writing is sophisticated and the tales are provocative. Walter White is a much more fleshed-out Ethan Allen Hawley, and that theme is one that means a lot to me.
I speak foreign languages, I play musical instruments, I study mathematics and physics. My vast music collection has only two vocalists. Early Bowie and Nilsson.
At this point isn’t it safe to assume that everything Zaslav does is about managing the balance sheet and everything else be damned, but with a pinch of PR “blah blah blah” window dressing?
No wonder so many people are depressed and unhappy. "Entertainment" is the apotheosis of existence. Football games, pop music, sitcoms.
I used to go to Street of Dreams exhibits, ostentatiously decorated houses to let people know what they can't afford. Every single house, every one, ended in a room with a huge TV showing some fucking football game.
This was how you knew you'd Made It; you had a big TV showing a concussionball game.
I don't have cable or a TV and really wish there was something to streaming that curated classic movies the way TMC does (and AMC used to). Sometimes great movies seem to pop up on Amazon or whatever and I happily stream them, but the algorithm is just terrible. You stream something like The Searchers and it recommends a bunch of spaghetti westerns. You stream The Apartment and it recommends a bunch of obscure screwball comedies. I would kill for a subscription service where I could stream...essentially the AFI Top Movies list.
I subscribe to the Criterion Channel. You can watch it on a laptop. The main problem with it for me is that there's not enough time to see everything I want before the new monthly viewing list comes out.
I’m one of the lowbrows who comes home tired from work, catches up on the latest craziness in the news, and then is not in the mood for anything tragic. I tried several times to watch Succession, but the characters were such awful people that I couldn’t become interested in them, or care what happened to them. I need to like at least one character.
Honestly, I tend to watch news shows or read.
I know it makes sense for them financially but now I’ll probably have to pay more for HBO so I can have a bunch of Disney productions I never wanted. It slowly creeps back toward being cable yet again.
TLS kind of like Tremors meets God knows what. swell movie. Thanks
I watched The Last Stand. It was amusing at times, but it's essentially gun porn. So much violence! I remember when people were shocked by that. Now it's everywhere and nobody bats an eyelash.
I'm not a Puritan, but the constant glorification of violence isn't a good thing.
Counterpoint: guns are great in action movies.
But at what cost? It desensitizes people to violence and feeds into the gun culture that guns are necessary and good.
I was just reading the report of a man shot and killed yesterday when he answered the door to police who were responding to the wrong address on a domestic violence call. It was in the middle of the night and he had grabbed his handgun before answering the door. He no doubt believed it made him safer. It didn't.
Some people need guns for personal safety but that is a small minority. It may make for interesting viewing and good box office sales or streaming hits but I don't think it is good for society. Just my opinion.
I'll show myself out now. It's a beautiful day. Temps in the 80's here. Gonna sit on the front porch and yell at the neighbor kids to get off my lawn. :)
Count me as on of the rural's who will not keep subscribing to MAX if it stops doing excellence. Reality TV disgusts me and I can't stand watching stupid. I stopped TLC and Discovery when they went the most programming is reality tv b.s. Prime video is a nightmare because it's all bait and switch. Offerings are all about sucking you into some ad-based nightmare. It used to be easy finding something on Prime to watch but not anymore. My go to streaming services are HBOMax and Netflix. I will not keep paying HBO to watch idiocy. As to the analogy that people coming home don't want to watch something good, could it perhaps be that they dumbed down their audience with idiocy and too many people are forgetting what good entertainment is?
No quibble with the article, but I get annoyed at the phrase coastal elites. In fact if you go to most states you will find a city where the latte drinkers live and work. So in Ohio you can visit Dayton and then see Wright State University - a behemoth with a medical school etc (i taught there in 1977-78.) So yes most folks apparently want Dr Pimple Popper but the educated zoom meet-ers are scattered across the US. And by the way the low brow live along to coasts.
Watched The Last Stand per the assignment. A mediocre movie that was tons of fun to watch. As many are.
Sonny, Sonny, Sonny. In a few years, some future BOD of Max will have a great new idea. Shuffle their lineup and call it Home Box Office.
I saw the first two hours of MTV when it went live. I didn’t like it, and never watched it again.
I was a big Tull fan still (I play flute) and one of the videos was Aqualung. It seemed to be at half speed. I’d seen it in concert four times; the first was what inspired me to become a musician.
I decided to pass on the whole music video thing. No regrets.
Also a huge Tull fan. I watched early MTV.. well, I LISDTENED to early MTV--there wasn't actually much to watch. It was something that ran in the background.
Once they started moving away from primarily music, I stopped.
I'll be sticking with them because they have the rights to my men's and women's national team games but really don't want the price to go up for Discovery crap. Its sad for me to say that too because I used to like Discovery (the channel) before they went MTV's route and completely abandoned their original type of content for reality TV.
I grew up loving Discovery. It's so alien to realize that they are, in fact, a lowest common denominator network a la HGTV. Is Animal Planet even still a thing?
The problem isn't so much one app that has everything as it is no way within the app to sort out the wheat from the chaff. (And what constitutes wheat and chaff is different for every viewer.)
I find it fascinating that this is happening in the almost-immediate wake of the general retail business discovering that they cannot survive as all-things-to-all-people. Bed, Bath, and Beyond is going bankrupt; Kohl’s is trying to reposition as a “lifestyle” store with in-store Sephora departments (which didn’t help J.C.Penney’s) and everyone else is closing stores. Tell me that the better streaming comparison is Amazon, but even it is trying to segment-offering me(for one) a new business membership, a Kindle loyalty club beta, special checkout options at Whole Foods, and who knows what’s coming next week. It FEELS as though there is an entire generation of executives who barely understand their businesses-or perhaps business. The whole thing about costs, profits, products, customers and the complex relationships among those things. As if they got all tangled up in the glitz and glamour of flashy trendy products and stock options to support flashy lifestyles. . . . a high churn influencer disposable economy. Maybe it was ZIRP; maybe it’s the fundamental amorphousness of a world so dominated by onlineness. But it feels to me as though we have entered a phase that is likely to be especially weird and probably short-lived as decision-makers learn how to make economically based decisions. Don’t jump in to overpay for what you don’t really want: it’ll probably all change in a year anyway!
Kindle is a godsend. I have hundreds of books wherever I go, thousands if there is a WiFi connection, which in Vietnam is almost everywhere.
The Harvard Classics, 40,000 pages from ancient Greek writings through the 20th century, is $2.
They need to improve a few things like physics equations, though.
ZIRP is at the root of lots of modern problems. I blame ZIRP and human inability to understand numbers we can't count with our fingers.
And, I think, comp packages based on stock options/price, which may have reified the fascination with volume (account numbers) over profits and related cost economics.
Ah, Dr. Pimple Popper. Along with 1000 Pound Sisters and other notables like Love After Lock-up, America shows how far it has fallen down the rabbit hole.
On a related note about rabbit holes, the new series named after bunny burrows is most excellent! Kiefer is his usual intense, tortured self, while Charles Dance is just delightful.
"I don't even own one."
Back around 1984 I stopped watching for a month; no special reason, I think I was busy, but then when I tried to "see what's on" I found myself fidgeting and squirming, unable to focus on it, annoyed by the dumb jokes. With a few exceptions like Breaking Bad I haven't watched TV since, almost 40 years, and I watched those on a computer.
this is like when I'm at the gym and the History Channel is on and there's a 100% chance it's either Pawn Stars (which, at least I guess, *tries* to deal with some history) or some variation on "Aliens are real and they did some weird stuff, man."
Rita,
Classic comedy is priceless and HARD!! A lot of the early TV stars had spent years honing their crafts, and it showed in performances so smooth we took them for granted until we saw what mindless and tawdry freak shows would look like!! The Groundlings have always been with us, but Shakespeare didn’t write exclusively for them; he wrote for us all. Which, I shudder to think, might support your point about us going down the rabbit hole!!
Tom Cannon
Asheville, NC
Honestly, most Americans have always wanted mindless entertainment. Silly comic strips (ask your parents if you don’t know what they are), silly TV shows (Jack Benny, anyone?), on and on. We have always had a significant population of who can’t, or don’t want to, think.
I'm old as dirt. I loved comic strips. George Burns and Gracie Allen were genius. Mindless entertainment has it's place. Love After Lock-up and 1000 pound sisters is a different breed.
Jack Benny was funny. OK, it was the same joke over and over, but it wasn't inane like TV has been for decades.
I'm not quite that old although I know of those you mentioned. Silly tv is very different from idiotic tv.
People don’t want excellence.
People want Smile.
I make a point of never consuming anything as entertainment. If it doesn’t stimulate my mind, I don’t want it. No television for almost 40 years, nothing more derivative than science fiction. I do like some of the series like Breaking Bad and Foundation, the writing is sophisticated and the tales are provocative. Walter White is a much more fleshed-out Ethan Allen Hawley, and that theme is one that means a lot to me.
I speak foreign languages, I play musical instruments, I study mathematics and physics. My vast music collection has only two vocalists. Early Bowie and Nilsson.
I hate Smile.
:(
At this point isn’t it safe to assume that everything Zaslav does is about managing the balance sheet and everything else be damned, but with a pinch of PR “blah blah blah” window dressing?
“the balance sheet and everything else be damned” describes almost everything in the entertainment business
No wonder so many people are depressed and unhappy. "Entertainment" is the apotheosis of existence. Football games, pop music, sitcoms.
I used to go to Street of Dreams exhibits, ostentatiously decorated houses to let people know what they can't afford. Every single house, every one, ended in a room with a huge TV showing some fucking football game.
This was how you knew you'd Made It; you had a big TV showing a concussionball game.
What a disgusting life.
I don't have cable or a TV and really wish there was something to streaming that curated classic movies the way TMC does (and AMC used to). Sometimes great movies seem to pop up on Amazon or whatever and I happily stream them, but the algorithm is just terrible. You stream something like The Searchers and it recommends a bunch of spaghetti westerns. You stream The Apartment and it recommends a bunch of obscure screwball comedies. I would kill for a subscription service where I could stream...essentially the AFI Top Movies list.
I subscribe to the Criterion Channel. You can watch it on a laptop. The main problem with it for me is that there's not enough time to see everything I want before the new monthly viewing list comes out.