Yeah, the whole Network being blanded with everything else so there is no uniqueness anymore could be a good topic. One great example, Scifi Channel turing itself into Syfy, or MTV showing Star Wars movies, or another network getting CSI New York, putting that show on like 4 stations now. It’s ridiculous.

http://cgi.ebay.com/The-Jon-Kate-Gosselin-8-Souvenir-Divorce-Tiles_W0QQitemZ120437590040QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item1c0aa3c818&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65%3A12%7C66%3A2%7C39%3A1%7C72%3A1205%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A0%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50

Actually, the subject of what cable networks are now and what they used to be (in terms of names and acronyms, etc.) might make for its own blog post.

“Jon watches Kate make Hate” is perhaps not legally exploitative (right word?) but is morally exploitative. The fault does not just like at the feet of perpetually spaced-out Jon and coiled-like-a-cobra Kate. “The Learning Channel” – gosh, I love the irony in that – is responsible for putting this swill on television and for keeping it there.

There will always be a demand for the teleivision airwaves to beam swill directly before our eyes. Rarely, though, has the attempt to pawn off such swill as “educatinal” been so disingenuous as it has been with this show. Say what you will about The Jerry Springer Show – its host knew he was running a carny show with freak (possibly staged-freakdom) guests. Jerry never pretended he or our show was enlightening us. But the solemnity of the commercials promoting “J&K,” suggests that the viewer is not going to be treated to a simple dose of trash but to something more: a learning experience. “See, this is what families with multiples are like.” Wrong. It’s what unhappy families on camera are like and how the constant presence of the camera – which has an unobstrusively blunt way of making the best and worst of people stand out – can pervert people – or pervert them further. Even the younger children now (by walking around with the technical people, smiling to the cameramen on cue) must be getting the notion that life involves something more than being raised by a mother and father. They did not ask to be robbed of their privacy. Strange, how we have parental consent laws in this country when it comes to things such as child labor laws (especially when it comes to children working beyond a certain amount of hours on a movie set), but when the parents are the ones who are making the money, parents’ safety for their children seems to be thrown under the bus. Shows like this are a disgrace and to the extent they have any socially redeeming value to US, the psychological devastation in ways “both subtle and gross” (as Q once said) inflicted and self-inflicted upon the participants more than outweigh such value. I’d liek to think that the cancellation of this show – for whatever reason, were it to happen, were a good thing – but a cancellation would probably merely encourage a TV producer to think, “It’s not that we had a bad itdea. We just didn’t do it right this time.