Well,
On the one hand I totally agree with you. TV is currently dominated by imagination-devoid spinoffs of Law & Order and CSI. Once you add in Without a Trace, The Closer, Cold Case Files, Criminal Minds (the only one I can watch, personally), you're into the A&E cop shows. Criminal Minds reruns, American Justice reruns, The First 48, Dog The Bounty Hunter. Then on to the Animal Planet Cop Show, Animal Cops. Back down to USA for JAG reruns, NCIS reruns/new episodes, Numbers reruns. Etc etc.
Beyond these you have the endless mindless reality TV shows. For God's sake, Survivor is down to grubbing for ratings by inviting back every Anti-social, borderline personality with sociopathic and/or sadistic tendencies and throwing them against all the most clueless, naive, bubble-headed "innocents" for whatever vicarious thrill the viewing audience can derive from watching these folks race to the bottom of the inverse bell-curve of immorality. Sad as that is, it doesn't compare to the sheer mind-numbingly pedestrian Reality Shows that universally function by building up the hopes of no-talent hacks in various creative arenas, then tearing them down as savagely as possible for the entertainment of the slush-brained spuds that can stare at that crap hour after hour.
Figure we're what, maybe 10 years from public bloodsport-shows? Perhaps the Running Man, The Most Dangerous Game or maybe just some old-school gladiatorial games between convicts?
And why? That's the easy question. No one with the money/resources wants to risk any of that money on truly original creative endeavors anymore. It's so much easier to calculate returns on remakes, reinterpretations, medium conversions and (if they're really desperate) maybe a genuine sequel or prequel. It's crazy, because on the rare occasion some talented director actually DOES secure a healthy investment in a new movie, the Box Office hit pays off like powerball.
You're right, every month or two it costs more for the privilege of watching unwatchably derivative crap. It's my opinion The Walking Dead only got this far because A) AMC is genuinely desperate, B) The Walking Dead is a successful comic, so others took all the genuine risk involved in making it successful, so all they have to do is harness that preexisting winning formula in a comic-to-TV conversion. Don't get me wrong, I'm as jazzed about the new series as everyone else, but that doesn't mean I don't recognize it's derivative as well.
Anyways, one can hope that the guys with the cash will realize before they don't have the creative mediums anymore and thus they've run out of chances to change their ways. Our creative mediums were built on originality, and until that originality returns they'll continue to decay.
Edit: Just thought of something else. The various studios, publishing houses etc. have had the government up in arms about Film/Book/Music piracy for years, allegedly on behalf of the artists. Only now though, when we're reaching the absolute nadir of creativity and both TV and the movie theaters grow increasingly devoid of anything interesting with every passing month is the government moving with force to finally go to the heart of the Pirates' power and attempt to stamp out all freedom on the Internet by creating legislation allowing them to compel ISPs to block any site/domain that earns the displeasure of the various layers of government agencies. Specifically, I'm talking about the last bastion-holdout Torrent sites. Demonoid being the flagship/leader of the Pirate activity.
They couldn't crush Demonoid the way they did Pirate Bay and many of the others, where the identities of the owners/admins were easily discovered. Demonoid's controller has managed to keep his identity secret and his Net activities obscured in some manner. Probably due in some way to the enormous revenue-flow gathered into his accounts from advertisers paying rates almost equivalent to commercial airtime during the Superbowl/World Series etc.
No, I'm not saying that the full might of the world's intelligence agencies couldn't find Demonoid's controller if so directed, but *something* has obviously prevented the information-brokers from either getting the right answers, or passing those answers on to the government agencies that want Demonoid crushed as a favor to their Hollywood associates. I mean, the guy isn't Bin Laden. Personally, I suspect it's some sort of jurisdictional issue, because it's known that Demonoid's owner/controller isn't a citizen of any North or South American nation. Maybe it's as simple an answer as the actions required to do the job make it an unpalatable process.
The reason I bring up piracy is that the devaluing of all the derivative crap Hollywood churns out seems to be the only mechanism that offers any hope of reversing the decay of creativity in the various production mediums. After all, pirate copy or not, everyone I know buys the DVDs of the rare few really good movies each year. Motivations vary, but people seem to want the extras such DVDs come with, and the greater quality offered by legit copies of the movies. Same goes for books, music and comics. (Well, not so much comics, but I could make a strong argument that in the case of comics the additional exposure actually helps/increases their sales. It's certainly been responsible for the success of the American counterpart-companies that handle all the english language-dubbing of Japanese Anime/Manga & Hentai)
Sorry for the rambling nature of my post and my post add-on, but I'm seriously interested in what everyone here thinks about all this. Thoughts?
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Originally Posted by Legion2213
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