🚀 go-pugleaf

Mark Anderson <mea@nospambradnylion.com> wrote:

> Ever since I stopped watching TV I listen to a lot of radio.  I don't 
> know which medium is more retarded.  Roe and Roeper and Garry Meier are 
> IMHO, the only decent daily shows worth listening to in the Chicago 
> market.   NPR has some decent weekly shows.

Well television is hitting new lows, but I think the comparison to radio is
difficult because it's a much more vast wasteland. I mean if you exclude
internet radio, it's still a territorial market.

With TV, anything above OTA, the channel count goes into the hundreds, even
on lower priced basic services.

This isn't a complete list, but some of the stuff I observed over the past
few years on tv, in case you want to know what you are missing:

Several years ago, both Ice Road Truckers and Ax Men appears to have created
a whole new genre of shows, but it's hard to define what that genre is. They
aren't really documentaries, they aren't really reality shows either.

Although Ice Road Truckers spun off another series (IRT-Most Dangerous
Roads), following the path Ax Men created is somewhat interesting. 

Ax Men
American Loggers
Swamp Loggers
Swamp People
Gold Rush Alaska
Moonshiners
American Hoggers
Lady Hoggers
Rat Busters NYC

Another oddball "thought" was this auction stuff, it seems to me it spread
quite raipdly into similar themed shows

Storage Wars
Storage Hunters
Storage Wars Texas
Auction Hunters
Auction Kings
Scrappers

Of course there are the pawn shop shows

Pawn Stars
American Restoration
Hardcore Pawn
Pawn Queens
Oddities

That last one (pawn queens) was sort of interesting in the respect that it
was about a shop in Naperville.

Even that American Pickers which is about 2 guys driving around looking for
junk at old farms and warehouses has a clone, Picker Sisters which is about
2 women driving around old farms and warehouses.

Interested in following around repo guys? Lizard Lick Towing (no, I'm not
making that up), Bear Swamp Recovery and South Beach Tow are just a few out
of the group.

The problem with most of these shows is the reality of them aren't enough to
make it interesting. Nearly all of them have some kind of artifical problem
to deal with, usually dealing with time, and if that can't be applied,
money.

There is an oddball one called Flip Men, two guys in the Salt Lake City area
that buy up foreclosed homes at auction, usually only checking them out
doing a drive by or educated guess based on the description.

What gets me, after they buy it, check it out, figure out what has to be done
to "flip the property", all of a sudden there is this 10 day, two week or
three week, "it has to be done by then to get it on the market".

Why?

It's never explained to any degree and just seems to be an artifical date so
some kind of tension can be created. It's real estate, not a fucking gallon
of milk that is going to expire.

Another one I just thought of, Mounted In Alaska.

That one followed the exploits of a family owned taxidermy store in Alaska.

Let's see Brandmier top that.

-bruce
bje@ripco.com