Wait...those letters stand for something?!?

I like watching Top Chef. And that's because I like to cook and love getting ideas seeing these guys cook. This is a program on it's 6th season with Bravo. And in my opinion the only reason to watch Bravo.

Remember when Bravo used to be a channel focused on movies, acting, and the arts? No? Maybe that's because if you to watch the channel now you are subjected to several dozen reality shows...almost all of them awful except Top Chef. Bravo decided years ago to reinvent itself. Because the average person doesn't like to think when watching TV, they love watching reality shows because it takes that process out of viewing.
Now not all reality programs are bad. There are maybe 2 to 3 good ones. But the bad ones? Beyond horrible.
Bravo now has multiple programs dedicated to "The Real Housewives of 'Insert location here'". And they are vile unlikable hags. And we watch them because we love train wrecks. We love to see others suffer who aren't people we know. But as bad as Bravo is, they aren't the worst at the reinvention of their programing.

Remember MTV? Music Television? Oh, the still have music. That is if you are willing to be up at 3a.m. and you like to watch the same 10 videos. Some could say that MTV invented the first reality show with The Real World. The Real World was good enough for the first 3 seasons but then after that it got repetitive. You can only watch so many drunken conflicts before it all blurs together. But the funny thing is that MTV used to also have some fairly innovative shows. Back in the late 80's and most of the 90's MTV would break up the nonstop music videos with some shows that could be said helped shape other future shows. Beavis and Butthead may have been crude and lowbrow but it was one of the first shows to do it right. And the show still featured music as the duo ripped on bad videos. Other shows like The State and Liquid Television brought original humor and animation to the forefront.

But now? This is a totally unwatchable channel. The Hills? Real World/Road Rules Challenge? My Super Sweet 16? This is hollow vacant shit that is only influencing the worst of behaviors in our youth. I know the same could be said about Beavis and Butthead in the 90's but at least that show was done in jest. People actually buy into these lifestyles that are portrayed on the current crop of shows. And where MTV used to be the channel to find music? With the internet it makes MTV irrelevant. And that is sad because some of the videos made for MTV over the past 30 years were amazing pieces of art.

Remember MTV's sister station, Video Hits 1? When is the last time you saw a video on this station? Now when is the last time you saw a whore or a douchebag trying to find "Love" on a reality show full of wannabe actresses and actors who are willing to f#ck their way to their own show? Every other hour you can see crap like this. The station is almost like a medical study on how many different people with STDs can you get into a single location. And VH1 used to be the classy, adult oriented station. The change might have started with the I Love The #### series but at least those shows were kind of amusing walks down memory lane. Then VH1 thought we wanted to see who wants to blow Flavor Flav and Bret Michaels. And then they thought we wanted to see shows on who wants to screw the people who wanted to blow Flavor Flav and Bret Michaels. Classy indeed.

TLC? The Learning Channel? I have learned that I don't want to watch this channel because all it shows are people who have given birth to several kids if only to have a better shot at having a compatible organ donor (At least that's my theory) or midgets and cakes. There is nothing to learn from this.

I can keep going on and list all the bad new directions of all these horrible networks but it would just depress me.

There are a handful that networks that have reinvented themselves or have shown original programming that stays true to the networks theme (See Discovery Channel and AMC...both have put out great series over the past several years). But it's going to be sad to say that these will always be in the minority.

So now that Top Chef is over, I'm going to switch it over to Mythbusters and see things that I always wanted to do or test.

Right on. See you all later.