After a subway campaign a few months ago, New York's primary PBS station is continuing its reality show-bashing campaign with a new batch of YouTube (and I assume on-air) mock ads for fake reality shows on cable channels whose names sound like those channels who lost money on uplift and are now cleaning up in the Nielsens and billings with the lower-brow fare--the spots all end with the tag "The fact that you thought this was a real show says a lot about the state of TV" (examples included in link):
http://www.thewrap.com/tv/article/pbs-mocks-reality-tv-fake-shows-about-tanning-family-feuding-clammers-video-103141 I'm not going to say this time that PBS invented the genre with "An American Family," but that tagline is interesting, considering that every time I read Tim Goodman or Alan Sepinwall or Mo Ryan they're telling me that we're in a new golden age of television with all of these wonderful scripted drama series. Is it that some people can't believe it because most of those shows are on premium channels? Or, considering my (partly joshing) belief that PBS audience attracts viewers under 8 and over 80 (not 8-to-80), is it just possible that the over-80 audience and ultrahighbrows (like the former Boston Globe arts critic who is now a blogger who proclaims that PBS now has nothing to do with culture) just doesn't like television? And that major reason is why every attempt at highbrow (or at least upper-middlebrow) cable channels has bombed or mainstreamed and why Ovation reruns "Fame," "So You Think You Can Dance" and now "Smash?" -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
