This will be one of those “old farts” posts about how things were better in the good old days, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Now that I am streaming all of my TV shows, I appreciate that it is now a la carte. I don’t have to pay a hefty percentage of my video bill so that others can watch all of their sports programs. But, I have noticed that the quality of American TV continues to drop significantly, especially now that streaming it taking over. Now, it seems that too much of what is available is watching someone jump through hoops and not get thrown into a pool of Jello. Many other shows are about envy and decadence. The rest seem to be about apocalyptic end times, and the dark side of life such as zombies, witches, and evil type things. What happened to the shows that told a story and let us know the characters on a weekly basis? I know those types of shows require creative writers who can put out 25 or more stories a year, and a dedicated group of actors who likely demand higher pay as their shows become more popular.
I’m not saying that these shows don’t exist anymore, but they seem few and far between, especially in the American market. I don’t know if there just aren’t enough creative writers to sustain those shows, or if it is just a financial thing. The Jello shows as cited above are certainly cheap, that probably is biggest part of it. One of the major side effects of streaming is that shows from around the world are now available via some media outlets like AcornTV.
Most of my TV watching time is now made up of shows from England, Australia, New Zealand, and sometimes France. Those countries still believe that a storyline can be entertaining and be worth paying for. About the only American channels I watch now are PBS and Paramount. The rest are, for the most part, no longer on my radar.
RJ's Corner - Having My Say 
The 4 month long writers’ strike is having its desired impact on TV programming. So-called “reality” shows with unknown actors or civilians is what the studios and networks are left with. Such a situation will simply speed up the death of network TV and cable.
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Oh, yeah, I forgot about the writer’s strike. Maybe that has something to do about it. There are some shows I really enjoy from the U.S. I hope they survive these times.
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I thought about the series I’ve been streaming lately. The last two were from Germany and Korea, not the U.S., so I guess I’ve made that migration without thinking about it. Since I require closed captioning to understand dialogue, it makes no difference to me what language the actors speak. Moreover, I like watching the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle differences in societal mores in other cultures.
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I couldn’t watch without the captions, but thankfully all of AcornTV’s shows are captioned. I have heard the even British and Australian shows, people use captions because they are sometime hard to understand with the accents. I also enjoy the cultural differences of other countries. It’s fun to appreciate the diversity. Things like the “F” word are common on British TV, but I still feel uncomfortable saying it myseld.
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