One thing I hate about being home sick is that the quality of daytime television has really gone down hill. I remember when I was a kid I used to watch a number of morning cartoons and then the Price is Right in the afternoon. Somehow watching Bob Barker made everything seem okay. I also remember watching the Whammy and shows like the Facts of Life. These shows were great at keeping my interest and helping me forget about how terrible I might feel.
Today, however, I’ve been home with the flu, trying to get rest on the couch and struggling to find something worth watching. I found an episode of Scrubs, but since I’ve seen every Scrubs episode ever made many times, I hardly found it entertaining. So I decided to flip on the CW to see what was happening there.
At first there was some type of TV Court show. I don’t remember which Judge was on, but I know it wasn’t Judy. I watched for a few minutes and was struck by how judgmental and confrontational the judge was. I know her goal is to make a judgement about the case, but there seemed to be a number of comments directed simply at the character of the parties involved in the case. These comments were merely seated in assumptions based on stereotypes. While the case was interesting, the presenting of evidence was painful and the attitude of all parties was obnoxious. Why do people watch these shows, I wondered? Still, rather than changing the channel, I decided to leave it on that show as I took a nap. When I awoke, The Steve Wilkos Show was on.
I’ve seen my share of daytime talk shows, but this one really unsettling. It was one of these episodes where one person accuses another of something terrible and they spend the episode talking about how awful that person is since they did this terrible thing (that no one has proof of). Then, at the end, they reveal the results of a lie detection test and further villainize that one person. The audience joins in the hatred of this one person and everyone but the host is painted as either evil, stupid or irrational.
I used to catch one of these shows from time to time when I was younger, but they seemed much different then. Tamer, perhaps. For one, the hosts in the past seemed hesitant to cast judgement on any person until we all heard the facts. On this show, we had Steve Wilkos belittling people left and right. He actually called one guy a rat at the end–saying that he saw him in a gutter and almost stepped on him.
Fighting and yelling seem commonplace on these shows now. I remember this behavior was once thought to be outlandish and so inappropriate that Jerry Springer was considered controversial and only aired at night.
Yet this is taking place during the middle of the day and what’s more is that there seem to be versions of this crap on every channel I look at. All of these shows seems terribly scripted to me and I wonder if any of these people are remotely “real” or whether it’s all just acting.
Even more, I wonder why they are so popular? Why do people watch them? Clearly, I watched an entire episode of the Steve Wilkos Show today, but why? I found it distasteful and fake, yet I stayed on the channel long enough to find out if the father had “really” molested his daughter. Why?
It’s not just the CW either. Right now every channel we have (and we don’t have cable) except PBS either has a daytime talk show of this caliber, a TV court show, or a daytime soap opera.
What happened to shows like The Facts of Life and the Price is Right? When did overdramatized, interpersonal squabbles become the only facts of life we’re interested in?
Will the next generation have nostalgic memories not of the soothing voice of Bob Barker, but instead of the judgmental accusations of Steve Wilkos?
My friend on Orkut shared this link and I’m not dissapointed at all that I came here.