Nobody had that expectation before. Television was something you had absolutely no control over. |
Now when you see the promos for 'Category 7,' everybody knows what that title means, everyone knows what FEMA is. |
Now, I think candidates realize that they've got to collect these constituencies, these audiences, like you would assemble a patch-work quilt, |
Obviously, we are disappointed. We never want to see fatalities go up. Even one fatality is too many. |
One can argue the history of America has been one big makeover show, |
One reason we watch these shows is the cheese factor. This ups the cheese equity of American Idol , as opposed to the (1950s) quiz shows scandals, which undermined the very value of what those shows were. |
One thing that made this comic territory was that there was very quickly somebody they could go after, and somebody they could go after in a separate, safe kind of way. |
Only in the new millennium, in the waning days of ironic cultural breakdown could something like this have happened. He is now a brilliant actor. |
Parents are now talking about kids staying home playing poker instead of going out to movies. It opened up this whole other area. |
People are ceasing to believe those things for which we have empirical evidence. That creates a vacuum into which psychics can flow. |
People expected to go in to see a movie, and it was like a guerrilla attack. No one was expecting it, especially in Manhattan. |
People watch four or five hours of coverage of a very sad story. Humor has always been a way to smooth that over. It's one of the ways you can process things. |
Pure and simple, these things are promotional tools. They're more fun to consume than 30-second ads, but they're still advertising. If you can get people to go to a show like 'Lost' or 'The Office' every week, why not get them to participate at other times? You exploit the existence of this universe you've created and squeeze out more audience participation. |
Reality has taken a major hit. But it's far from dead, and some form of this stuff is going to be on television for at least the next century, if not longer. |
Reality TV comes along and it proceeds to marry with every other type of program and have offspring. We've got reality TV married to a talent show ? 'Nashville Star' and 'American Idol.' And now I think the same is happening with home improvement shows. |