Junk on Television
WARNING: What follows is almost a reprint of an essay I wrote in 2006 . I don't have many new thoughts anymore. I even gave it the same title because I couldn't think of a better one. There's a lot of stuff on television. There are shows about fat people trying to get thin, people who collect junk, people who sell junk and people who try to keep people from getting fat or collecting junk. It runs the gamut. They don't show movies on network TV like they used to. We used to have "Saturday Night at the Movies" or something similar, where a network would program a 3-hour block and show a movie. Now, they take the same 3-hour block and program three shows about people trying to survive on an island , navigate an obstacle course or prove to three jokers that they can sing . Movies have been relegated to pay-cable channels. Partly because programming "reality shows" is cheaper and partly because commercial-free pay-cable makes watching movies on ne...