Hey, did you see the Emmys last night? Me either! Or anybody else, really.
Last night's Emmy broadcast on ABC was the lowest-rated since Nielsen started keeping track. The numbers fell off twelve percent from last year.
Why?
Critics have lambasted the show for its self-important Oprahizing, the flat humor, the uneven hosting job of the five best reality show host nominees. But that wouldn't explain why nobody tuned in to begin with.
Maybe it was that we're more preoccupied with our upside-down mortgages than we are with watching multimillionaire stars flash their couture on the red carpet.
Maybe we're distracted by the immediacy of entertainment we've come to expect: Red Box, Netflix, You Tube, episodes on DVD demand.
Maybe, in one of the ugliest Presidential contests of the modern era, when we sit down at the end of the week to unwind, we don't to tune in to a program which will doubtless come replete with political grandstanding and assorted partisan cheap shots.
Maybe we've had it with lame sitcoms, retreads of retreaded movies, obnoxious commercials, and the open sewer-behavior seen on some reality shows.
Maybe we just don't care.
It's easy to lose patience with television, especially with the likes of, for instance, the sex-drenched Two and a Half Men airing in local syndication at seven in the evening.
But there's C-SPAN's wall-to-wall coverage of this summer's nominating conventions, without which David Letterman could have never selected his hideously dancing Delegate of the Day, without which we would have been bereft the image of a balloon-covered cameraman still imperviously aiming his lens at the stage. Come on, that's a party.
There's the marvelous Dirty Jobs (DISH Network channel 182, Tuesdays, 9 PM EST) with Mike Rowe, which gives some just screen time to essential workers most simply don't think about.
There's John Adams, which brought to the small screen the life of the similarly fame-shafted second President.
There's watching Michael Phelps, live and half a world away, outswim the competition by a fraction of a fraction of a second.
There's good in that blinking box.
I can't say that I blame you from failing to watch the industry congratulate itself. Me, I spent the evening struggling to properly cook a chicken and drinking wine with friends. But then I unwound for an hour with my husband on the couch as the TV blazed forth, and... it was a pretty good hour.
