Why do people have such boring taste in TV?

[N7OperativeAlpha]

Why is TV mostly comprised of sitcoms, police procedurals, medical shows, and reality shows? Do most people lack imagination? I wish there was more sci fi and fantasy. Does childhood and our education system kill off imagination?

TV could sure use more spaceships and sword fights.

You can thank games like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Knights of the Old Republic, and The Eldar Scrolls V: Skyrim for that.

I used to be a typical FPS gamer who only played Call of Duty. Several years ago. A friend begged me to play Mass Effect. A few years later I got tired of FPS and finally decided to check out Mass Effect. I was hooked from the get go. The sense of scale, the action, the adventure, the characters. I loved it! I was left begging for a TV show with awesome characters, adventure, and epic space battles.

[mr_kennedy]

A Mass Effect TV Show adapting the games would be amazing

[thekillman]

Why is TV mostly comprised of sitcoms, police procedurals, medical shows, and reality shows? Do most people lack imagination? I wish there was more sci fi and fantasy. Does childhood and our education system kill off imagination?

No, it's much much simpler. Money. Or better put, low cost.

A reality show mostly requires cameramen, someone to cut it all together and a bunch of attentionwhores who want to be on TV.
Police/Medical/Sitcom shows are a tried and true concept with little risk attached.

These kind of shows are relatively cheap and easy to make, are accessible and easy for the public to consume.

Contrast Sci Fi or Fantasy, which needs not just to build an elaborate world from scratch but also need often a lot of CGI to make it all work. Scriptwriters need to understand the same built world, the actors need to understand it, etc. Contrast a police procedural where an actor needs little more than "you're the good cop/bad cop/victim" kind of stuff.

Cheap and easy is easy to produce, low-risk, easy to have a ton of, and if it fails it's not that a big failure.

[Anja]

I observe sth similar in my country.
I think complicated plots are difficult to follow for many people today - it's easier to listen to some ordinary people using ordinary slang bragging about ordinary or primitive topics.
TV presents what people want to see - those who like a well thought through plot must wait for the few good films or series.

[Annoyed]

I think it's a combination of Killman and Anja's ideas.
The businessmen who make the decisions want the most young and foolish eyeballs in front of the screen that they can get (older people are MUCH harder to sell to) for the lowest cost possible, and are also decidedly adverse to risk. Rolling the dice on a sci fi show is a bigger risk which costs more, so many won't try it.

On the audience side, an awful lot of those young viewers the advertisers covet have the attention span of a gnat. They just aren't interested or have time for long involved plotlines that they have to think about to understand and follow, let alone understanding the world and society the story is being told in. All of this takes time, and many of the youngsters just don't want to spend the time or effort to do so.

[P-90_177]

I thin you all are being a little overly harsh on the greater viewing public. Granted reality shows are trash, no doubt about it, but people are just attracted to different things.

We as sci-fi and fantasy fans are attracted to high ideas and swashbuckling adventure, to get a feeling of escapism from daily lives. But people can get the same feeling from the likes of Soap Operas or Dramas because they feel more grounded in the real world, and just in the same way we will keep watching our shows, they will grow attached to the characters.

When it comes to police and mystery dramas I'm not even sure I need to explain this, given that people have always loved murder in fiction. They may all be a little bit samey, but like I said it's all about how people are attracted to the characters.

Gameshows are exciting to people for the reason that we get to see real people aim for the grand prize, and when they play along at home they feel better for knowing the answers.

Even reality tv has a draw because many people naturally like gossip and scandal in the case of the likes of Big Brother, and seeing such weird characters in real life make them feel better, and other more niche shows like... I dunno... storage wars give people some best of both between that and gameshows of a sort.

What was said about some people lacking imagination, well that's true to a point. But people can simply be imaginative in different ways. Some people find sci-fi boring because they think it's outlandish and impossible, while we find more regular tv as boring and too mundane.

Besides, where's the fun in having all the same? If everyone enjoyed all the same TV all the time then there'd be no variety and the stuff that we find that we really love just wouldn't seem as special.

[ecgordon]

Even among fans of imaginative TV there can be a wide range of opinions. There have been several popular shows I never got into, others I like can't seem to draw an audience. One man's boring is another man's passion.

[jelgate]

One man's trash is another man's treasure. It seems arrogant to just because the general public doesn't agree with your taste to find them boring. I get it as I am a science fiction fan as well. It can be frustrating that our interests don't match up with the general public. That is the problem. TV has always been about mass appeal. I find it arrogant to label people's taste as boring because they don't want to watch science fiction

[ecgordon]

I've got a question for you. If genre shows are what most on this board prefer, why is there so little activity on The Expanse forum? Are you watching it? If not, why? If so, please tell me you're not bored with it.

[Annoyed]

I want to like The Expanse. There is a dearth of good Sci Fi, particularly spacecraft oriented.
But I've tried twice to watch this week's episode and lost interest before the 20 minute point each time. It just doesn't seem to grab my interest. I'm going to keep watching it for now, but the next thing to watch on sci fi might be 12 Monkeys, when it starts up again.

[Gen. Chris]

Procedural shows are easy to tune in and out of as they rarely have overarching stories. Compare that to cable or similar quality shows where (almost) every single episode is important.

Basically, I like L&O SVU. I do not need to watch every episode of every season to enjoy it or understand it. But a show like Breaking Bad? I gotta watch every episode of that. Some people simply don't have the attention span or the lives to do that every week.

[garhkal]

On the audience side, an awful lot of those young viewers the advertisers covet have the attention span of a gnat.

Well put. I have often though that people being so engrossed in their phones, would be the death knell of attention spans.

[jelgate]

Well put. I have often though that people being so engrossed in their phones, would be the death knell of attention spans.

That is not an age thing. I know several old people who lack patience.

[bearfax]

Bring back Commando Cody.

[garhkal]

That is not an age thing. I know several old people who lack patience.

From all i have experienced, it seems the youths are the one with less patience than old people. BUT i do agree, i know some oldsters who lack patience too.