Grad Student Wins Alan Alda's Flame Challenge

Why? Because we're all precious little snow-flakes, we all have interesting stories, and we all deserve our own television show.

Nope. Wrong.

The mass marketing of specialized channels happened because there simply weren't enough specialized viewers to keep the specialization afloat. They all had to start creating new stuff to draw more eyeballs for the advertisers.

MTV was an early victim. People got tired of watching music videos and they had to expand into whatever was edgy and new for the demographic they sought. That's why we have Real World and Road Rules and The Challenge XXI and "Pregnant at 16" and whatever other stuff they can draw people to. "Made" is homage to the fact that MTV has changed from music TV into "teen TV" but just not been honest enough to change the name.

It is an insidious problem. AMC (American MOVIE CLASSICS) has created new TV series (Mad Men) and is now heavy into "CSI Miami". Even TVLand has fallen into the trap, airing new sitcoms they've produced.

It was a grand and glorious vision in the 80's. 500 specialized channels so anyone could find the kind of material they wanted to watch anytime. Cable networks starting up to do the equivalent of "The Scotch Tape Store" or "Spatula City". And then finding out that fractional audiences brought fractional ad revenues.

PBS gets away with it because they have convinced donors that they are special and it's an honor to give lots of money ( a rich people demonstration of social responsibility), they have convinced advertisers to pay for ads that are almost not ads ("this show is funded by..."), and use a lot of BBC produced programs to draw viewers that will pay to keep the transmitters fed with electrons.

PBS is, however, far from the "if not PBS, then who..." they were close to being many years ago. I was going to say british sitcoms are "if not PBS, then BBC America", but even BBCA has fallen into the trap and is busy showing lots of US shows --- at least any US show that has Gordon Ramsay as the host.

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