Sunday, September 12, 2010

The TV MegaSite's Blog Post #83

I hope you have enjoyed your summer! I can't believe the new fall TV season is already here.

We have all still been working on our site and trying to make it good. Even with a good economy, it's tough to find people willing to donate much time to the site! And we get less and less ad revenue - but I guess that's just the Web in general right now. Well, don't worry because either way, we will continue to work on the site. It started out as a hobby, so even if I never make any money on it again, I will still keep going on it. You have my word on that! Unless I get bored, but I doubt that will happen, ha ha!! The site has been around, in some form or another, since 1996, so if I haven't lost interest by now...

We have some new volunteers writing our episode guides for The OC and some other shows (some new ones to come).

Even though As The World Turns is almost over, we still have volunteers working on that section of our site. I know a lot of people are very sad that it's ending.

Soaps are dying, and it's due in part to the bad writing. The people in charge (or The Idiots in Charge, TIIC for short, as some fans call them) have not done a thing to improve the writing. I guess they think soap fans are stupid and will watch whatever crap they throw up there. It's very sad that an entire genre has to die because of their short-sightedness. They may claim that it's because of low budgets, or housewives working, or whatever their latest excuse is, but the proof that they are wrong is cable TV. People tune in to watch shows like "Mad Men", even though they never watched that network before. People watch that and other shows on iTunes. That's because they are GOOD SHOWS! They have great writing and acting. If soaps were that good, people would go out of their way to watch, too.

Even the worst primetime or cable drama is better than ANY daytime soap right now. It's very sad. Everything on soaps is completely predictable, boring, or stupid. You can't have constant violence, or people acting dumb, or doing things that no normal adult would do, and use the same tried plot devices over and over for 20 years, and expect people to keep tuning in! It's a crime that the people in charge of daytime or these shows even still have jobs. So don't believe what you read - the people killing the soaps are the executives in charge of daytime, and the executive producers of each show, and their writers - not the viewers.

One reason that people like soap operas, besides the romance or whatever, is that they are CONTINUING dramas. Even now, they rarely get canceled. That is why we keep watching, even when the shows get very bad. We are hooked on them. So imagine how horrific it is to watch them slowly wither and die.

On to a lighter note...summer TV is fantastic this year. You know, it used to be, back in the "olden days" (20 years ago and more) that in the summer they would have mostly reruns, and maybe the occasional variety show. I guess they thought people were out doing stuff instead of watching TV. That hasn't been the case for a while, and now the summer brings TONS of new programming, on both regular and cable TV. There is so much of it that it's hard to keep track! They don't have a nice neat "summer season" with a schedule like they do for the fall.

In fact, I tried to find out about the various shows at the start of the summer, and it took a good deal of research! I hope they fix that in the coming years. I know people like to complain that there isn't anything to watch in the summer, but that just isn't true.

This summer I watched Burn Notice, Royal Pains, Memphis Beat, Rizzoli and Isles, Dark Blue, Eureka, Haven, True Blood, Mad Men, Covert Affairs, The Gates, Being Human and White Collar...and there were certainly many other fiction shows you could watch, not to mention non-fiction! And not to mention daytime TV, if you are a fan.

I have to admit that I have also been catching up on some of the shows from the Spring...I tend to fall behind. Right now, as I type this, I'm watching episodes of "Happy Town". I enjoy this show, but I have a feeling that it won't be back (I have the same feeling about "The Gates", but I hope I'm wrong on both counts!).

Nowadays it doesn't pay to get too attached to shows because they don't seem to last long. Even the soaps!

What show's return are you looking forward to this season?