Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on June 30, 2020

The acute paucity of newTV shows to write about or review this week (indeed, this entire month) presents an opportunity for reflection today.

By coincidence, the current TV Blogunder its present author reached a milestone on Monday: No. 1,500. And voila! A TV Blog is born (or, more to the point, contrived).

For the record, ittook approximately 2,130 days to reach this point after taking up this task on Sept. 16, 2014. Can it really be going on six years of this? Yes, it really can be.

The overwhelming majority of these columns averaged about 700 words apiece. That amounts to a rough estimate of 1,050,000 words.

To say that this six-year period presented an embarrassment of riches for a TV column that had to be written five days a week is an understatement -- despite the handfulof fallow weeks each year when new shows are few and far between. Traditionally, this takes place every June and August.

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While reviews of new shows are themeat and potatoes of this daily blog, no single show, news topic or TV personality surpasses the man who emerges as the undisputed star of the last 1,500 of these TV blogs.

He is, not surprisingly, Donald Trump, whose journey from reality-TV star to reality-TV president has been chronicled (or at least mentioned) in upwards of 161 of theseblogs.

As noted more than once here, for journalists, he is a living, breathing gift that keeps on giving. As a matter of fact, he attained this status longbefore he so famously descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015 to announce his candidacy for president and denounce Mexicans.

Though hisname appears more often than any other person -- man or woman -- in these TV Blogs, he was far from the only man to be featured prominently here.

Unfortunately for the others, their names arose here because of their behaviors in the workplace toward women(alleged or otherwise).

Besides Donald Trumps evolution from Apprentice boss to apprentice president, this was possibly the second-mostconspicuous story of the TV Blog from 2014 to the present day -- namely, the derailing of some of the biggest stars of TV news and beyond in the #MeToo era.

In 2014, all were stars either in front of the cameras or running things from their spacious offices. Today, they are long gone -- Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Bill OReilly, Roger Ailes(deceased), Les Moonves and probably others.

The last six years and 1,500 TV blogs encompassed a generational shift in late-night television. DavidLetterman, Jay Leno and Jon Stewart moved on.

Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon and Trevor Noah took their place. Conan OBrien, now the elder statesman oflate-night, saw his one-hour TBS show reduced to half an hour.

Maybe Letterman, Leno and Stewart got out at the right time because audiences for late-nightshows and so-called linear television in general are not what they once were (although Leno continues to have a TV career with Jay Lenos Garage on CNBC).

Perhaps that has been the most consistent and ongoing of the stories that have been covered here: An evolution in television that has seen an explosion not only in theamount of video content that is available to the average person or household, but an expansion in the means of delivering all of it too.

Traditional TV setsreceiving over-the-air signals or requiring cable connections have given way to an array of broadband-based services whose only requirement for delivery is the presence of a Wi-Fi signal.

Maybe TV today can be summed up by revising the famous three-word phrase attributed to the late architect LudwigMies van der Rohe, Less is more. Perhaps TV today can be described as more is more. Or, for those inclined toward criticism of the medium, more isless.

For those of you who have gotten this far in this blog without bailing, thank you for reading No. 1,501. And thank you for reading all of theothers (those of you who did).

Heres to 1,500 more. Oy vey.

File photo of Donald Trump courtesy of ABC.

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Who Was The Standout Star Of 1,500 Blogs? Take A Guess 06/30/2020 - MediaPost Communications

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