Exposing the cable fable
Only last week, for example, they were trumpeting that October was a milestone month. For the first time, the basic-cable webs beat out the Big Four in both rating and share in latenight and in weekend daytime, all of which produced the usual "oohs" and "aahs" about the cumulative erosion of network viewership.
I'm beginning to find these factoids rather annoying. Implicit in the propaganda is a suggestion that the public is awakening to the glories of cable channel-surfing, thus discovering the riches offered by narrowcasting rather than broadcasting.
I don't think so. Last week the two most talked about shows in the TV universe consisted of Dr. Kevorkian's house call to CBS' "60 Minutes" and Jimmy Smits' demise on ABC's "NYPD Blue." In an era when so-called "appointment TV" has disappeared, just about everyone I know seemed to have an appointment with these shows.
Of course, they could have chosen to surf the musty series reruns, the old movies and exercise infomercials of the cable wasteland. They could even have wallowed in the carnival-style theatrics of the TNT or USA wrestling extravaganzas, which constitute those networks top-rated shows.
My only point is that, while network TV once was described as a vast wasteland, I would suggest that, spinmeistering aside, the vast desert of cable TV is an even more blatant example of squandered opportunity. While everyone wants to put down CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox, the Big Four still consistently offer a quality menu relative to cable's tacos and corn chips.
Narrowcasting once had an exciting ring to it, just like the vaunted 500 -channel universe. Well, the potential is still there, but at this moment cable is heading so far down market that it may take an archaeological dig to resurrect it.
Even the bowling and the embryonic gameshows of early TV in the '50s looked like class acts compared with such top-10 cable wrestling entries as "War Zone," "Sunday Night Heat," "WCW Thunder" and "WWF Raw." A look at the top 10 cable shows last week reveals only "Rugrats" and a couple of football games managed to penetrate the wrestling mania.
I have nothing per se against wrestling, but let's get real. These "contests" are doing to sports what some of the down-market magazine shows are doing to news. In point of fact, they're throwbacks to the old freak shows that used to tour America a century ago, with a nasty pall of violence and nihilism (the referees always take the biggest hits) that continues to grow uglier.
There's no small significance to the fact that the biggest advertisers on cable wrestling are purveyors of faux sports --- electronic devices that give you the "feel" of fishing or hunting or hitting a golf ball without actually leaving your La-Z-Boy.
All right, we shall now pause reverentially to pay homage to cable's "good stuff." I really liked HBO's "Winchell." Showtime and TNT, too, have given us some memorable cable movies, though none, to my knowledge, has been able to achieve an afterlife with an even limited theatrical run. The documentaries on A&E have been terrific, and Discovery also deserves plaudits. The astonishing success of the "Rugrats" movie underscores the hold that Nickelodeon exercises over its kids.
Sure there are bright lights amid the gray landscape of cable, but the hard truth is that channel surfing really isn't any fun. The numbers may be improving , but cable isn't delivering except for the young male sociopath addicted to faux wrestling.
All of which means that two possibilities may emerge: Either the audience erosion of the Big Four will cease and desist at some point in the near future.
Or, if it continues, there will be growing evidence that viewers are not migrating to cable, but rather may indeed be out with their kids or girlfriends seeing a movie, going to a live show, reading a book, surfing the Net or even more remarkably, participating in a real sport rather than a faux one. Then it will be up to the cablemeisters to do something more creative than simply distributing ratings factoids to the press.
