BY ALEX ISRAEL

In print | Published March 24, 2011 — Updated March 27, 2011 09:57

_“I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.” _
– Newton N. Minow

Minow’s famous (and frequently misquoted) speech is often used by cultural critics who claim that television rots the brains of children, causes obesity and attention deficit disorder and is rapidly ushering our society into a level of decadence not seen since the last days of the Roman Empire and, honestly, there are some days when I agree with him. After all, anyone who has ever sat at home in the afternoon, flipping through channels that contain nothing more than endless VH1 countdowns of “Best Celebrity Doghouses” and reruns of “The Real Housewives of Seriously, Why Are There Like A Hundred Versions of This Show?” can attest to the large amount of pure drivel that passes for television these days. And Minow lived in the days of four networks. What would the man say now, about those of us who live with hundreds of channels and nothing to watch?

I’m not going to deny that there is a truly incredible amount of brain-rotting crap hitting the airwaves on a daily basis. However, those who only focus on “Jersey Shore” and “America’s Next Top Model” are missing the bigger picture; over the course of the last decade, television has entered a golden age, with shows like “The Wire,” “Lost,” “Community” and “Fringe” daring to tell original provocative stories that are too sprawling for film and too visceral for literature.

This creative awakening is due, in no small part, to audience fragmentation and niche networks — some pay channels, like HBO and Showtime, and some basic cable channels like FX and AMC — that allow writers and showrunners to take risks that never would have been possible when there were only four networks and they were all fighting their hardest to gain the largest audience share.

Of course, there are drawbacks to this kind of audience fragmentation; when viewers are confronted with so many quality shows, it becomes challenging for a show to do well in the ratings, particularly when said show airs on one of the major networks. For example, AMC’s recent hit series “The Walking Dead” drew 6 million viewers for its finale, a record-breaking number for a cable network, but a middling to bad number for a series on a major network. This sort of audience fragmentation can lead to major problems for network shows with a more niche audience, like FOX’s amazing sci-fi series “Fringe”; last week, “Fringe” pulled in a little less than 4 million viewers, a really solid number for a cable drama but one that only increases fans’ worries that the series will not be renewed for a fourth season. (In case you couldn’t guess, this discussion is really an attempt to get everyone to watch “Fringe.” So please watch it, if only because I’ve been having a good couple of weeks, and all that happiness is going to go down the drain if “Fringe” gets cancelled.)

Another side effect of niche programming is the loss of truly popular water-cooler moments in television, with the exception of events like the Superbowl and the Academy Awards. Yes, there are shows that attract large numbers of viewers and have buzzy episodes — the first-season finale of “Lost” comes to mind — but these shows are few and far between, and are far from universally watched. Due to the drastic increase in niche programming and audience fragmentation, we will likely never again experience the kind of communal moments like the series finale of “M*A*S*H,” (which was watched by 60 percent of households in the U.S.), or the famous Dallas episode that left everyone wondering “Who Shot J.R.?” (53.3 percent of households watched that one). With the possible exception of the series finale of a cultural institution like “The Simpsons,” there will probably never be another watershed moment like those mentioned, when everyone could get together the next day and talk about the same episode of the same show.

Of course, it’s no longer a problem to find someone to talk about a show with; thanks to the Internet, the 7.5 percent of Americans who watched the “Lost” finale could discuss it to their heart’s content on discussion boards, blogs and columns. It can’t be denied that this kind of niche programming has led to much more risk-taking among network executives. After all, when your audience goal lies somewhere between five and 10 million viewers (much less on a cable network) you can greenlight a weird, twisty sci-fi show, an absurdist comedy or a sprawling saga of urban crime and know that, even if you only manage to attract a small percentage of loyal viewers, your show can still be profitable. (Of course, if your show manages to sell a lot of DVDs or makes it long enough to be sold into syndication, that helps). I know that I’m willing to worry about whether “Fringe” will be renewed (although seriously TV gods, if it’s not renewed I might have to quit television) in exchange for the privilege of watching “Fringe” in the first place.

After all, as Minow once said (in the same speech as the “vast wasteland” comment): “When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better.” That speech was made in 1961, but when I hear that quote I think of “Fringe,” of “Community” and “30 Rock,” of “The Vampire Diaries” and the fourth magnificent season of “The Wire” and I feel incredibly lucky to live in an era when these kinds of stories can be told on air.

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