Group Three.

I am really excited for the fall TV season. I was away in Nigeria all summer, so I missed all my favorite summer shows. I like to indulge in one or two TV shows, just to keep my sanity in the midst of all the readings and school work that I have going on. I promise this post is not a confession of my favorite TV shows. But as you might have noticed, we have some returning shows and a host of new shows this fall. Some of these new shows will be lucky to return for another season, and unfortunately, some of them will be canceled after the first season. So why do some shows keep coming back even though we already have a thousand singing competitions? You would think some organization should be formed that will come to a consensus on the number of singing shows that should be aired. But with every new TV season, you can expect to have a new ‘singing’ show on the list.

The theory of ‘Hegemony’ might be able to explain why we continue to see a string of shows with very similar patterns. The theory of hegemony explains that this happens when mass media functions to propagate and maintain the dominant ideology. The aim is to appeal to the widest possible audiences which will be able to generate maximum advertising revenue (Thussu, 52). So maybe the question I need to ask is, ‘what ideologies do we have’, because these competitive shows seem to be feeding into it.

Last week in my IC class, we talked about how a campaign after 9/11 fell flat because the campaign was asking a question no one was asking. It made me start wondering if the increase and success of certain TV shows must be answer to questions that viewers out there have. With the increase in competitive shows returning each TV season from singing, to cooking, to adventure, something in these shows must be answering the questions of some viewers out there. But when you take a look at the kind of shows out these days and analyze the content of shows e.g Basketball Wives or Flavor of Love, I can’t help but wonder, what kind of questions is this generation asking? Maybe I need to ask, what kind of answers are we looking for?