But we keep seeing a lot of disappointing TV -- and a lot of the same disappointments that have long plagued TV.
Take THE YOUNG TURKS.
It's allegedly a progressive program.
We've noted our problems with the program and its main host for some time.
Remember, host and plus-size model Cenk Uygur made "The Whore List" -- he was part of Journolist -- where all the "Save Barack" narratives were produced in secret.
In July of 2011, we offered "The unexamined (American) lives" which included the reality about Cenk's firing from MSNBC and how it was no great tragedy:
Cenk Uygur is out as host on MSNBC for a number of reasons including the fact that he was a temporary host of a program due to go dark when he was brought on as host. Here's another fact, while Uygur brags that he increased the ratings of MSNBC Live, it wasn't by much and he continued to lose viewers. Hardball aired before his program and after and both Hardballs had higher ratings on most days than Uygur. Meaning people went out of their way to turn off the TV or watch another channel when Uygur came on. Al Sharpton will be hosting a program in the hour Uygur previously occupied; however, Sharpton was not the first, second or third choice. Had MSNBC been able to close the deal they wanted to in February, Uygur would have left the airwaves as host by the end of March. There is also the issue of likability and, as one MSNBC executive joked, "Leona Helmsley has a better TVQ rating than Cenk."
Oh, how Cenk hissed back.
But we didn't care. We told the truth and we didn't really care what Cenk thought of us. He's a sexist pig.
In 2014, we covered THE YOUNG TURKS in "TV: The Brave New World?" and again in "TV: The useless huffing and puffing of flaccid men."
We know the show provided a purpose for some on the left in 2016 before Hillary Clinton was officially pronounced the Democratic Party's presidential nominee.
We weren't all that impressed but we rarely are.
We've never been impressed with Mika so why would we be impressed with THE YOUNG TURKS and their use of a woman as den mother to the unruly boys?
That was the only role for women on the sexist show.
And apparently the only role at the 'network.' They made news earlier this month for hiring Dan Rather to host a program.
If you missed it, White males have traditionally faced great barriers to hosting news programs.
There have been only a handful who have broken through the glass ceiling over the years --
Oh, wait.
White males have always hosted news programs.
And here's TYT giving how much money to Dan Rather to host one?
Cenk insisted, "Dan Rather is an institution who we all grew up respecting tremendously for his brand of fearless, iconoclastic journalism. We jumped at the opportunity to bring Dan onto TYT because in addition to decades of invaluable experience, he clearly understands and embraces that millennials prefer to get their news online instead of from the cable TV formats their parents and grandparents watched."
What a bag of lies.
Dan Rather hosted the third rated network news broadcast out of three network news broadcasts. He was chronically low rated. They tried every stunt in the book -- even a co-host -- to increase his ratings.
Nothing worked.
And, no, he did not understand "that millennials prefer to get their news online" as Rather's CNN interview demonstrated.
Do they also prefer to get their news from geriatrics?
At any rate, this is Dan Rather who lied -- for years -- about the JFK assassination -- lying that the Zapruder film -- which he had seen -- showed JFK being hit from the front -- the film shows him being hit from the back. A huge lie.
For more of the lies that Rather and CNN took part in regarding the assassination show James DiEugenio's "How CBS News aided the JFK cover-up" (CONSORTIUM NEWS -- Robert Parry has passed away, by the way, our condolences to his family and his work and his person will be missed).
There was no reason to hire Dan.
He's 86-years-old. Why would you build a new program around him?
It only got worse once his first program aired.
His 'lead story' (jaw boning, no reporting) was the three week continuation of government that might continue after three weeks or might stop. Love the 'mights' in news broadcasts, don't you?
Dan tried to pretend that it was also about immigration.
But last time we took, Senator Dick Durbin wasn't an immigrant nor was he in danger of deportation.
The government shut down "crisis is not over," Dan wanted you to know, "it is only slowed back down."
"America did not teleport into 2018, we walked a path," Dan insisted as he continued jaw boning -- apparently forgetting that part of the way we ended up here was via whoring journalists like, hmm, maybe Dan Rather who declared of Bully Boy Bush on THE LETTERMAN SHOW, "Wherever he wants me to line up, tell me where."
He faced the camera for a static shot the entire program except when we had 'graphics' around the 13 minute mark for about two minutes as his face vanished and text of his words being spoken danced around the screen. A Jefferson Airplane Filmore light show would have been more cutting edge than that garbage.
Wait? Was that a commercial? Because it popped up twice. "I see what we all see . . ." words splattering across the screen.
Oh, wait, there was also the nearly minute and a half of CPSAN footage.
Where was the reporting?
There was none.
It was a half hour of Dan Rather reading a teleprompter in a single static shot.
Apparently, Dan's being paid so much that they can't even afford a camera operator so they have to lock it down for the entire show.
THE YOUNG TURKS are being sued for racist work practices. Anyone can file a lawsuit. Doesn't mean that what happened happened.
It'll be interesting to see how that plays out or doesn't.
The lawsuit has drawn some more attention to Cenk's blog posts*.
Those blog posts?
We don't give a s**t.
Cenk is sexist on air. That matters to us.
Cenk calls women "girls" on air -- adult women.
When he's trying to be 'compassionate' and 'understanding.'
Cenk hires one man after another but women don't join the ranks of the on air staff.
Those are the things we care about.
Cenk's a sexist. He can say whatever he wants off the air -- even on a blog*. We don't care. We care about the sexism on the air every episode of THE YOUNG TURKS.
Equally embarrassing has been the launch of THE PARAMOUNT NETWORK.
PARAMOUNT, for those who don't know, is a film and TV studio.
It created films starring Carole Lombard, Mae West, the Marx Brothers, Clara Bow, Bob Hope, Veronica Lake, Dorothy Lamour, Bing Crosby, Alan Ladd, Audrey Hepburn, Jack Nicholson, etc. In the 90s, they created UPN which had shows like EVE, STAR TREK: VOYAGER and STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE.
Now they've created THE PARAMOUNT NETWORK and they want you to watch.
Watch what?
LIP SYNCH BATTLE?
Well some people apparently can't watch the Kardashians all day.
But for those looking for real programming?
Nothing.
Movies -- movies already available at AMAZON PRIME or NETFLIX or HULU or CRACKLE or . . .
They do have the TV show HEATHER (based on the film).
Or, rather, will have.
Come March.
In June, they'll have a sitcom entitled AMERICAN WOMAN.
Gee, maybe next time, wait until you have programming to air before your network starts broadcasting.
They do have the mini-series WACO.
This is the worst mini-series we've ever seen.
This is not us going after Harvey Weinstein (who produced the mini-series -- a fact we only discovered a few minutes before we started writing this).
This is about an awful mini-series.
If, for example, that's how David Koresh spoke, don't speak like him. It destroys everything, the voice is so weird.
It's bad acting, it's bad writing, it's bad everything.
And we were eager to watch this. One of us is too young to remember this as it happened, the other was out of the country when it happened. Waco is often mentioned in conversations and we always cop to the fact that we know very little about it.
This mini-series won't teach us any thing. It's hideous and never should have aired on any channel or network.
In the so-called new Golden Age, the best THE YOUNG TURKS can do is dig up the moldy, oldy Dan Rather and the best the 'new' PARAMOUNT NETWORK (it previously was part of DUPONT back in the original Golden Age) is a bad mini-series?
The second Golden Age of TV?
Visionary would be wonderful but, at this point, we'd settle for flat out reflective -- something both have failed at.
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*Cenk on his blog. Was he sexist?
We've only read a few examples of that writing from 14 years and longer ago.
He talks about women's breasts. Is that sexist? No. Women have breasts. Many straight men and many lesbians love women's breasts. That's a reality.
He says women should do this by the third date and that by . . .
Is that sexist?
Not necessarily.
He's allowed to make the rules for his own dating.
And we'd rather a guy who expects you to put out post that intention/desire online so that women have a chance of knowing what they're getting into if they date him.
Cenk is a sexist on air because of the reasons we outlined.
What we've read that he wrote on his blog did not strike us as sexist -- what we've read of the posts he long ago deleted.