Trash TV and other disasters

Last week I saw the final show of Germany´s Next Topmodel. I expected an interesting show with lots of fun, interesting guests and good entertainment. All I got were boring comments from the host Heidi Klum who wore an awful outfit. (Well, I know I have talked about her before, but she seems to be really important for the German TV culture). The show was boring, without any intelligence and I waited without any success for only one tiny highlight. This happened during prime time when one usually is expecting high quality entertainment.  How can that happen? Why is the most interesting aspect of the show the never-ending commercial breaks? But not only Germanny´s Next Topmodel is like this, also other shows like Daniela Katzenberger´s documentation of her life don´t contribute anything to the cultural education of our country.

Firstly, TV means making money and people seem to butcher it more and more. Breaks for advertisements every 15 to 20 minutes are not rare and during shows like “Deutschland sucht den Superstar” there are short commercials offering the newest mobile phones. Commercials seem to have a big impact: In 2010 Tv commercials had a business volume of $ 180 billion. Indeed the commercials fund the shows and we can watch them for free, but often they are really distracting.

Secondly, people offering TV shows produce what the target group wants. That makes sense. However, very often it turns out to be trash TV. After a long day of working people do not want to watch movies where they have to use their brains. All they want is to watch a light show where a mid-20 blond girl gets her nails and breasts done.