Tuesday TV Touchbase: The Death of Television

Today's Tuesday TV Touchbase takes a bit of a thematic turn from where I pontificate about whatever TV show I watched in the last week or so.

Today we're going to talk about the death of television.

Which is a bit weird because there are people who would described the era we're living in as peak television with more TV shows than ever, high quality productions of a dizzying variety of genres and perspectives on a growing number of new ways to deliver those shows.

But at what cost do we enjoy this wonderful bounty of entertainment?

As Alan Moore wrote in Miracleman, "In all the history of earth, there’s...never been a house of gods…that was not built on human bones."

OK, that's a bit too dramatic maybe but the lesson from that quote is still applicable.  

In other words, nothing great can be achieved without sacrifice.

For the achievement of peak television, is the sacrifice the death of television itself? 

A few weeks ago, NBC announced that the long running day time soap opera Days Of Our Lives would no longer be on the network. After being a fixture on NBC's schedule for nearly 57 years, Days Of Our Lives would be departing it's programming line up.

My wife Andrea used to be big fan of Days Of Our Lives . She followed the show during it's peak time under writer James Reilly who wrote the infamous serial killer storyline where it was revealed that the multiple murderer was none other than the wholesome and beloved Marlena Evans, portrayed by Deidre Hall.

Here's a photo of Deidre Hall.

OK, that's Deidre from her Saturday morning TV show Electra Woman and Dyna Girl.   

So anyway, exactly how did wholesome and beloved Marlena Evans become a serial killer?

Because she was possessed by SATAN!!!!

Seriously, that was direction they went with to explain Marlena's turn toward serial killer. 

She got to hover over the bed and shit before she was exorcised of SATAN!!!!  and the serial killer was back to being holesome and beloved Marlena Evans again.  

(On the episode Friends where Joey Tribbiani claims to write his own dialogue as Dr. Drake Ramoray on Days Of Our Lives, the writer who writes our Dr. Ramoray by having him dropped down an elevator shaft is played by actual Days Of Our Lives writer James Reilly.)   

Anyway, I digress...

Notice that I wrote "NBC announced that the long running day time soap opera Days Of Our Lives would no longer be on the network." I did not write that the show was cancelled.

Days Of Our Lives will in fact live on courtesy of NBC's streaming service, Peacock.  

TV networks are becoming less relevant, consigned to running more game shows, reality shows and sports.  Scripted programming is relegated to whatever is comfortable to an aging audience who just wants more procedurals. 

Producer Dick Wolf currently holds down 9 hours of programming on CBS and NBC with a trio of blocks centered around his Law & Order, FBI and Chicago franchises.

NBC which dominated with classic sitcoms like Cheers, Seinfeld, Frasier, Friends and The Office has totally given up on sitcoms.   CBS only has 4.  

Meanwhile, it's not just broadcast networks that are feeling the pinch. Cable channels are feeling the pinch as well.   

TBS and TNT have pulled the plug on all original content, burning through whatever obligations they have (such as the forthcoming 4th and final season of Snowpiercer) and who knows, perhaps not even then?  TBS is sitting on a complete set of episodes of Chad it now will not put on the schedule.  

Original content for the cable channel AMC appears first on their streaming service AMC+  before showing up on the cable channel a week later. 

While broadcast and cable networks become wastelands of homogenized new content or constant cycles of old content (like the ubiquitous reruns of Big Bang Theory and Friends on TBS), anything worthwhile is happening on streaming.   

Which is cool that these platforms exist to give life to this virtual renaissance of new shows but it's happening at the expense of fragmenting the viewing audience.  

Shows on broadcast networks are available to everyone.

Chances are your cable package provides a variety of channels that most people with cable have access to. Yeah, you might have picked HBO over Showtime but for the most part, you'll still likely have your choice of TBS, TNT, AMC, USA, FX and more.   

But to see certain new shows on streaming depends on which specific streaming service you choose to pay for.  And not everyone can or will subscribe to all the streaming services.

And the crux is this is TV you gotta pay for and since that's where the money is, content providers are moving more shows to those streaming platforms. 

Which is why Days Of Our Lives is moving from NBC to Peacock.

Or to paraphrase Alan Moore, "a house of peak television is being built on the  bones of broadcast and cable networks ."

In short, the death of television as we know it.   

 OK, next week we're back to the normal stuff of writing about whatever I watched last week.

Until then  Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.