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Why mostly everything on Television in rubbish

Sometimes I think looking at a television program that all of television is a conspiracy to dumb everyone down. Nothing on is  ever good with the exception of sports otherwise most of it seems remarkably shallow(Some might argue the same about Sports).
But the more I think about it the more it seems that TV is not a conspiracy. Like anything that lives long enough on the market it gives people exactly what they want. There was a survey about movies that people want to watch versus what they actually watch on their Netflix queues. For some Schindler's List keeps popping up on the list of movies want to watch in the future but when the time for choosing something comes along they prefer a low brow brainless flick. One can easily extrapolate and see why this happens in TV. Every channel is trying to garner the attention of the viewer. Now imagine that a TV channel happens to be showing Schindler's List, the viewer is simply going to skip and go over to the channel that happens to be showing something rubbish(They might even make fun of the rubbish but they still watch it). Since every channel wants eyeballs more than anything else it is an inevitable race to the bottom.
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Abhinav Mittal said…
Maybe it did start as a result of conspiracy theory to dumb down people. and later on, after some time- it became self sustaining where channel owners broad casted stupid stuff that people liked.

Any ruler would want mainly two things from his subjects : that they generate revenue for him and do not interfere in his working.
By using televisions, they achieved the latter - got stupid subjects that waste all their time watching stupid shows - leaving them with no time to think about other stuff.
September 23, 2012 at 12:24 PM
Kartik Kaipa said…
Could be the case as well but the conspiracy theory seems a little far fetched simply for the reason that when television was invented no one knew what it could be used for.
The internet has evolved in a similar way. It started out with mostly intelligent discussions and now with its spread the nets IQ has decreased quite drastically.
All social networks have the same curve. Usually start of with good things but end up becoming something else entirely.
September 24, 2012 at 4:19 PM
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