Entertainment Industry that is...

Turn on the TV.

What do you find?

Crap.


I either see shitty newscasts about the sorry state of the world... crap.
Or perhaps I watch the latest market targetted, manufactured reality show crap.
Or maybe a sitcom that's been using the same formula for the last three crappy seasons.
Or the sci-fi series that's had so many different writers that the plot has been repeated five ways from tuesday, and there's no series continuity anymore, that... even though it was good once upon a time, it's fallen into crap.
Or the stupid game shows that are so contrived, and overhyped, that I just have to shout 'NO DEAL!' and change to the weather or put on my anime DVDs.

Even then, there's no escape. Anime suffers from problems too, which I will get into in a second.

Movies seem to have fewer symptoms of this massive craptacular problem, but they still suffer.

What do they suffer from? What does the entertainment industry in general suffer from?

INDUSTRY!


Shows these days seem to be the result of an online survey asking, 'what do you want to watch today?' with multiple choice questions. Then the shows are forcefed to writers who are told, 'make this!' and then given time constraints that just don't work with the creative process. Entertainment is treated like an assembly line.

Anime has suffered here too. As an example, let's look at Negima. Manga by Ken Akamatsu, two anime series under its belt, and a Live Action series has just been announced.
The first anime? It did okay most of the season since the episodes were practically storyboarded off Ken's manga. However, they caught up with Ken, and weren't done. So the writers, with four episodes or so to go, had to contrive a final-boss-esque mini plot right at the end and cram that obviously more complicated than it should have been plot into that four, TV slot sized, episode span. Instead of maybe, the company stopping at a decent point where they could wrap up the current plot nice and smooth like, hang the story up and wait for more of the manga to finish before making an installment later.

Instead, they shoved a contrived little bit most 14 year-olds can see through at the end, and then a year later, did a second season with another company on a completely different track.

Shaft, who did Pani Poni Dash, did Negima!? These guys, from start to finish, turned out one episode a WEEK.

An episode... a week. How they manage to animate it in a week is awesome, but getting the story made adequetly is impossible. And the series shows it. The season starts out strong, probably had some lead in time, but by the midway point, the plot falls apart, events seem to be out of place, or contrived, and when they aren't rushing the plot, they stick in some kind of useless filler... like the imfamous Suka episode. (Watch the whole season, and you'll figure it out.) And at the end, the final part again, seems cramped, or contrived, and they still had an episode left over for a bonus episode. Obviously, rush writing suffers in one week times...

Let's do a bit of math.

Ken Akamatsu turns out one chapter of his manga, a week. It's popular, it's a story well told, and his quality is superb.

The Evangeline Arc, which is all of Volume three, is eight chapters long. If ken was going at his chapter a week rate, that arc took eight weeks to complete.

The Xebec Anime has three episodes devoted to this arc. If they were turning out an episode a week like Shaft was doing, they did it in only three.

Luckly, Xebec had the story written up 'for' them ahead of time, so that actually didn't suck.

However, view the math.

Ken: Eight weeks. (Two Months) And he's a slave to his work.
Anime: 3 weeks to do the same part. But they also have to draw everything repeatedly, add sound/write music, AND conform it to acceptable standards of episode length, and quality.

So in comparison, the guys doing the anime have to do three times the work, in less than half the time it takes Ken and his staff to turn out each part.

This THRASHES the anime... especially when the writers are involved in such time constraints, that they don't have time to go back, look at their work, and tweak it to get rid of the glaring flaws that show up.

Again, what's the cause of this?

It's "Business" it's an "Industry". It's treated like a piston engine, insert raw ideas and market strategies, get back money. Those who want to treat it like an artform, can't do so because the businessmen run it.

It's like this all across the entertainment industry. Weakest in movies though, where they have two years to go 'oh, that'll come out like shit, fix it.'


So what do we get? We get all that crap on TV, that has been made by the lowest bidder, and rushed to get it to us before it is READY.

I swear, if it was treated more like art, and people actually had time to get it right, and all the television was made of decently written, well done work, the 'industry' wouldn't need to perpetuate its hack and slash rushjob of 'feeding the market'.


Anyone else got ideas or views to add?

Haven't watched TV since 2005 - I watch youtube.

Is there any reason to own a TV for anything except videogames these days?

At least you didn't get the great REALITY SHOW TSUNAMI that us lucky brits got. Big brother...and its many spin offs like Castaway (Big brother on an island) Survivor (Island with more fist shaking and competitions), I'm a celebrity get me out of here! (BB in the jungle with z-list celebs) and so on and so forth...I hate freaking reality shows. I don't care that some bitch can't dance and is crying about it. I want to see people get shot and have detectives solve crimes, I want to see a war drama, I want to see stupid comedy that rips on Blair and bush or that's a great sitcom with genuinely funny jokes. I want to see street drama about current issues like gang violence and romance. And for the love of God I want to see one decent gameshow where contestants answer questions that have a certain degree of difficulty! (thank god for university challenge and countdown!) I know most of it was done before. But damn it it was GOOD. And heck if the writers can come up with something new that isn't reality based, then praise be.

The only reason for the prevalence of reality TV and the like is two things, firstly the producers don't need to hire writers. Secondly, all of these shows can be made on the cheap. This makes them more money and profit to make the next big brother series, this time with a crocodile pool in the middle of the house.

BTW, if anyone doesn't know what shows I'm referring to, wiki is your friend. See the HORROR...the horror...

Fuck big brother, the only reason anyone watched it was to see if the people'd finally crack and start fucking like rabbits.