-- hard to reckon that while the The Bachelor, Who Wants to
marry a Millionaire Farmer et al are hits things like the
Sopranos, The Wire and a few others are also popular,
although to lesser extent. The Wire came close to
cancellation but made it to the end of its planned run. (Hard
to think - to early in the a.m.) Perhaps its like society -
the middle class is disappearing. It's either crap or
diamonds. It's a strange age ...
I think maybe that's at the root of Sturgeon's law; the 90
per-cent of crap and the large amount that's popular enough
to turn a good profit, help pay for the elite 10 per-cent, so
long as it comes close to breaking even. Someone else could
likely say this more elegantly. Need coffee
>
> Sophistication can't be braked, but it does tend to
lose the mass
> audience, even when it can gather at least a sizable
minority of the
> surviving audience...hence tendencies to gamble on
complex and
> nuanced work, along with some ever crasser (along
with, on average,
> the best set of television drama the US, at least,
has seen has been
> a complement of the most ridiculous, degrading set
of game shows
> we've ever been plagued with, for obvious example,
and fake cinema
> verite series).
>
> Todd Mason
>
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 12 Jun 2008 EDT