Greetings and salutations to you, hypothetical reader,
Or… to quote Roger Waters… “Is there anybody out there?”
Get comfy, kids. Kick back. It’s gonna be a longer road than usual but I promise… it won’t be worth the trip.
Because, whether or not this screaming into the void reaches anyone anywhere something needs to be said…
DO YOU REMEMBER ATTENTION SPANS?
DELAYED GRATIFICATION?
THE EXCITEMENT OF ACTUALLY ANTICIPATING SOMETHING AND HAVING TO WAIT FOR IT?
Of course you don’t. Nobody does.
And it’s all Mary Hart’s fault.
Let me take you back to the heady days of yore, children.
To a time before “On Demand”.
To a time before the VCR.
To a time even before the (widespread) existence of the remote control.
There was a time when TV shows were advertised a little like movies. At the end of an episode a commercial would run for the next week’s episode. It would suggest the premise…
(Example. ON NEXT WEEK’S SHOW: Captain Kirk and company will run into a planet eating/starship swallowing machine that CAN’T BE DESTROYED!)
And it left you all a tingle with questions…
(How will they stop it? How can the Captain and crew of the Enterprise possibly save the day in the face of such an impossible foe?)
…Questions that burned in your young mind and heart, that thrilled and hummed with electric tension in your limbs, in your veins, in your very blood. These were questions you were “dying” to have answered. You simply “couldn’t wait” until next week’s episode.
(Okay A.D.D. generation, I know I’ve just blown your mind. I know the G.D.-Man has just reached across the interweb and laid a flurry of gob-smacks across the largely misleading face of your avatar so I’ll slow it down and break it down into “blipvert”-sized pieces you can handle If I’m able..)
Did I really say that an advertisement “suggested” something called a “premise”? And that was IT?
Oh yes, children. It was so, once upon a time. Once upon a time, when the world was young and days were long and we ALL possessed something called an “attention span”.
What is this “attention span”? I can hear your inner-eloi uttering.
“Attention span” meant that one possessed the actual, no-foolin’ ability to focus one’s mental lens exclusively upon a single endeavour (such as reading a book, watching a TV, or listening to a radio). It also, as is implied by the “span” part of the term, was an ability to sustain this effort (though it felt pretty effortless to such godlike beings as we once were) over long periods of time… sometimes HOURS!!!
Imagine it, little ones… an ENTIRE WEEK to wait, to wonder, to ponder possibilities, to agonize over cliff-hangers.
No blogs, no chatrooms or e-zines to get “spoilers” from. No “insider” leaks. No way to know how things were going to turn out other than the obvious: You had to wait and see.
Impossible, you say.
Torturous and Barbaric, you say.
Poppycock, you say. (Or would if you had any sense of linguistic tradition.)
No. ‘Tis true. And thus, knowing that we simply couldn’t get our next “hit”, our next “fix” until an appointed time in the future… WE DEALT WITH IT!
We GOT ON WITH OUR %*$#*&*-ING LIVES and applied our tremendous attention spans as had countless generations before us… to things like: exploring the oceans; elevating the human condition through determination, right-thinking and technology; extending our life spans through improvements in diet, sanitation and medicine… and so on and so forth.
Oh. And we sent men to the MOON.
Then we would glance at the calendar, then over at the clock and realize it was time for our weekly appointment with our favourite star-explorers (or town Marshal, or Detective, or Doctor, or Lawyer).
It was time to reward ourselves for a job well-done with a bit of relaxation, with a bit of anticipated FUN. Gratification, having been delayed was all the sweeter when at last we allowed ourselves the indulgence.
BUT THEN CAME THE ‘80’s… And with it, the decade, and generation, that cocaine and Ritalin built.
…And into the opening years of that faster-not-deeper decade came the harbinger of the end… a long-stemmed, prairie rose, fluent in Danish and Swedish… MARY HART, Mistress of Apocalypse Then.
(If only I could snort cocaine through those legs I’d truly know happiness, thought the movers and shakers of the decade. And before you say it: Yes, ALL the movers and shakers were MALE. Or Old-School Lesbians. Or Margaret Thatcher.)
But how does Mary Hart bring the Apocalypse? you ask.
Well, her damned pretty perkiness, gleaming smile and luscious legs made Entertainment Tonight into a juggernaut, a television mainstay that was to stand astride the gateway to weekday evening viewing like a radioactive Colossus, just ever-so-slightly killing all who entered here.
You see, nothing so epitomized the fusion of news presentation format with, oh what’s the word… oh yeah… CRAP, as did Mary Hart and the ET team. Though certainly not the origin of “Infotainment”, this glossy, vacuous, advertising supplement for the studios and networks in the guise of “journalism”, this was the tap root from whence the myriad poisonous future shoots would spring forth.
Hard Copy, Inside Edition, and countless others followed, multiplying year after year, the spread of this once harmless bubblegum approach to dressing up gossip in the guise of journalism created a generational appetite for “bite-sized” information “packets”. Soon enough, the few journalistic holdouts of evening news were laying on the bubblegum flavoured lip-gloss and puckering up in the hopes that a more brazen offering might retain viewership.
But it was too late… the deadly cocktail of paper-thin superficiality and tabloid tastes had done it’s job.
The Attention Span was dead. (Long Live the Attention Span.)
From then on the cycle became self-reinforcing. 
Faster, thinner, shorter, louder, faster, thinner, shorter, louder and repeat.
And then came the penultimate blow… the advent of new and much cheaper fusion of video and digital technologies. Documentary wasn’t a “film” thing anymore. Now any jagoff with a camcorder was a documentarian.
Sure some good work was done but the trade off was: a gradual acceptance and acclimatization of the viewer to grittier, shakier footage, under or overexposed, grainy as hell… this was the next look of “real”.
Remember when Cops was new?
And now the stage was set.
People would watch anything now. A “Slick” look was professional which must therefore have merit, right?
Meanwhile, a “Crap” look was “gritty and real”, which had to have merit too, right?
Wrong?
Add the return of the reinvented talent show format… cheap to produce, filled with “human interest” but the all-important ingredient the other formats were missing: JUDGEMENT.
Now if only we could somehow combine all of this into something…
Documentary’s crap-looking “reality” and “no budget for talent needed” bonus feature.
ET’s prurient fascination with celebrity waist-lines and affairs and weddings
And Pop or American-Idol and Weakest Link’s unhealthy infusion of snap judgement from experts no-one’s ever heard of…
Then we’d REALLY have something wouldn’t we? “REALITY TV”
Think of it… A whole generation of supposed adults obsessing over crap that would have insulted the intelligence of “Teen Beat” readers twenty years ago.
‘But, the barons in the balcony are laughing
And pointing to the pit
They say, “Aw look, they've grown accustomed to the smell
Now, people love that sh*t!’
–Don Henley, Workin’ It
SO… G.D…. WHAT’S YOUR POINT!?! For god sakes man, get TO it!
The point is this:
The other night I attempted to support capitalist broadcast by watching AMC’s broadcast of The Prisoner.
That’s right… the broadcast, commercials and all… no communist downloading or criminal Tivo-ing. Just actual, go old-fashioned TV-watching.
I mean come on, it’s Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellan in THE PRISONER! How can that NOT be worth watching a few commercials to support?
I’ll tell you how…
The F****WITS at AMC… that’s how.
The age of NO ATTENTION SPAN TV… that’s how.
You ever watch any of the more documentary styled “reality” shows over the past couple years?
You ever notice how much time in each half hour is spent telling you “what’s coming up next/soon/after the break”? And then they show a clip of it? And then after the commercial, they bring you back with a quick recap of what’s been shown so far… INCLUDING the “teaser” about what’s coming up, which they’re going to show you NOW… only to reveal that the teaser pretty much covered EVERYTHING!?!
Have you experienced this?
NO?
Well then, cast your mind back about 10 years (if you can) to a time when your local All-News radio station started telling you that THEY were the way to get your news because they were giving “more than just the headlines”. Did you notice that that was when they stopped reporting news and just started repeating the headlines more and more often!?!
Next on All News Radio…
“The Prime Minister Causes Controversy by calling First-Nations People Primitive Idiots!” Details will follow.
(And then moments later…) “According to the Globe and Mail, the Prime Minister apparently caused a controversy by referring to First-Nations People as Primitive Idiots!”
Reporter Ian McReporter has the details:
“Thanks Brian. Well, quite a stir was caused today when the Prime Minister apparently caused a controversy by referring to First-Nations People as Primitive Idiots, according to Defence Secretary Shiela Stupidnamehere’s Personal Assistant, who claims she heard the remark during a closed-door meeting. This is Ian McReporter for All-News Radio.”
“Thanks for that, Ian. We’ll be right back.”
“This is ALL-NEWS RADIO… MORE than just HEADLINES!”
WHAT!?!?!?! I mean… WHAT!?!?!
NO IT ISN’T!!! IT ISN’T MORE than just HEADLINES.
It’s EXACTLY JUST HEADLINES.
DOES NO ONE KNOW THE MEANING OF THE WORD “TEASER” ANYMORE?
Apparently NOT.
Because while I was attempting to watch The Prisoner, which I was enjoying, when the time came for the first advertising break…
(you know, the moment when the volume and brightness on your TV increase to ear-shattering, retina-searing levels?)
… AND THEY RAN A “TEASER” FOR WHAT WAS COMING UP AFTER THE BREAK!!!
DO YOU UNDERSTAND????
IN THE DRAMATIC, NON-JOURNALIST, NON-REALITY-TV, WORK OF FICTION-BASED PROGRAM I WAS ALREADY WATCHING THEY STARTED SHOWING ME F******ING HIGHLIGHTS FROM FURTHER AHEAD IN THE EPISODE I WAS ALREADY WATCHING!!!
DID I POINT OUT THAT I WAS ALREADY WATCHING THE DAMN SHOW!?!?!
WTF IN SPADES, PEOPLE!!!!
AAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
DO YOU REMEMBER ATTENTION SPANS?
DELAYED GRATIFICATION?
THE EXCITEMENT OF ACTUALLY ANTICIPATING SOMETHING AND HAVING TO WAIT FOR IT?
Of course you DON’T. They don’t even give you a chance!!!
How the HELL does anyone think this is the way to increase viewership.
With the possible exception of Toronto Maple Leaf fans, how many people would actually bother watching a sporting event if they already knew who won and what the score was?
HUH!?!
Or riddle me this… Who watches a Mystery when they’ve already been told the ending?
So LISTEN UP, AMC… I’m going to watch The Prisoner alright.
I’m going to do it the only way I can without having it ruined for me by one of Mary Hart’s twisted, bastard offspring.
I’m going to DOWNLOAD IT and watch it WITHOUT any commercials just so you can’t ruin it for me by telling me how “tonight’s thrilling final episode” will END… THREE AD-BREAKS BEFORE I GET THERE!!!!
And Reality TV you’re on notice too.
Any show that tells me what’s coming up after we show you what we’re going to show you about other upcoming portions of this episode and okay now we’re back to show you what we said we’d show you in the “sneak-peak” before that last “sneak-peak” so here it is wasn’t that great? Now, we want to show you that last “sneak-peak” again before we go to commercial in case you forgot about it.
Now we’re out for commercial.
And now we’re back…
Here’s the recap of the first and second “sneak-peaks” we showed you off the top of the show before the first commercial and now we’ve arrived at the moment when we can officially show you the second “sneak-peak” again because it’s just about to happen now and we don’t want it to catch you off guard or SURPRISE YOU OR ANYTHING…
AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!?! FLASH FORWARD IS A NOVEL BY ROBERT J. SAWYER AND NOW A TV SHOW STARRING JOSEPH FIENNES… IT is NOT the way to get me to watch your freakin’ show, MORONS!!!
Aww… Screw this…
I’m jumping into the Wayback machine and travelling back to a simpler time. A time when…
…TEASING meant TEASING, not SPOILING…
…when SURPRISES were things you HADN’T JUST BEEN TOLD ABOUT…
…when orgasms came AFTER sex, and GETTING THERE WAS 90% OF THE G*DDAMN FUN…
A time when…
I really did want to lick Mary Hart’s long-stemmed, lollipop legs all the way up to her still-perky, candy-apple behind!
HORNBECK OUT.
And out of touch, apparently.
(Editors Note: G.D. Hornbeck is no longer allowed within 100 meters of Mary Hart. Which is really for the best.)
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