WGN Morning News Blog

TV Sweeps month is just days away which means a whole new round of over-hyped rmediocre programming. To be fair, there are a lot of good programs out there but when you consider how many channels there are now, and the low number of hits equates to a batting average lower than Rusty Kuntz.

So in my never-ending job of trying to improve TV, I thought I, along with my TV friends, present some of junk that could be weeded out of the medium I love so dearly. I was inspired by a column in the Chicago Tribune by Maureen Ryan last November. While she highlighted a couple of interesting issues, I’d like to continue exorcizing these demons of those evil producers.

AARON SORKIN
Aaron Sorkin is best known for writing West Wing and Studio 60. He’s known for the fast-paced, witty banter in his shows. One Trib reader asked whether people at work really have such important conversations waiting for the elevator. But my point is that it portrays everyone in the office as having the same personality and having these rapid-fire conversations, not just at the elevator, but all day long. I’d have to wear my inhaler around my neck.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
In the groundbreaking All in the Family, the “loveable bigot” Archie Bunker asks Sammy Davis Jr. “I know you can’t do nothing about being black, but what made you want to turn Jew?”

That was 1972, the season that saw the show shoot from #34 to #1 in the ratings.

Now political correctness has sucked the edge out of TV, especially comedy. In fact, it’s even hit Sesame Street. Cookie Monster can’t binge anymore because the PC police have determined that (insert cookie monster voice here) “cookie is a ‘sometimes food.”

CLICHÉ’ CHARACTERS
Hollywood producers were quoted as tiring over cliché’ characters like the meathead jock, and the dumb blonde. Here are a few more:

over-the-top homosexual—FABULOUS!

overly mature 19 year old---- suffers teen angst but has vocabulary of 30 year old.

WGN news writer and second city assistant director Ann Marie Saviano has a pet peeve:

FEMALE SIDELINE REPORTERS

“These so-called pretty women who don't know jack about sports, reporting from the sidelines just to incorporate women into the action... It would be one thing if they knew how to say anything other than, "How does it feel, you just won?"... or "Back to you *guys* in the booth. But they don't.”

I agree…it’s like your childhood friends are getting together for a night of steak and beer and one guy shows up with his wife---changes the whole dynamic of the conversation. And while some of those reporters may have studied the stats and watched the games…have they ever run a post pattern in their lives? Do they think a button-hook is something on Mary Todd Lincoln’s cape?

Comedian Mike Toomey, whose love of TV has been a big part of his act, says pet peeves can be part of the guilty pleasure of watching TV.

“I used to hate how nobody would ever really die on a soap. The guy could get his head chopped of in a butcher shop accident and miraculously, he's back six months later for revenge on the man who lured him to demise,” Toomey said. “The guy was decapitated! Somehow, the evil yet mysterious gentleman, unbeknownst to us, was hiding [in the shop] and managed to steal the body and re-attach the head while substituting the corpse with pig parts left on Sam the butcher's floor, thus paving the way for the soap star's return for march sweeps (or he could just return as his own twin brother with an eye patch that nobody ever knew existed.)”

Toomey asks: Pet peeve or just really funny? When you look at it that way, it almost makes even bad TV a little more watchable.