TL;DRAbstract
American television series are industrial products concerned predominantly with constructing audiences and selling them to advertisers. There was a time when to get to the biggest audiences they could, producers did aim for the lowest common denominator and this gave substance to the accusation that TV was “dumbing down” intellectual life. (That does raise the question of when exactly was TV involved in raising intellectual standards). But now, with more channels and competition between free-to-air, cable and the internet, producers are looking for niche audiences, particularly in the A/B socio-economic groups that they can rust on. In this context, it is not surprising more and more of these supposedly “dumb” cultural products seek to connect with those niche audiences at deep levels and thus raise unexpected philosophical questions.
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American television series are industrial products concerned predominantly with constructing audiences and selling them to advertisers. There was a time when to get to the biggest audiences they could, producers did aim for the lowest common denominator and this gave substance to the accusation that TV was “dumbing down” intellectual life. (That does raise the question of when exactly was TV involved in raising intellectual standards). But now, with more channels and competition between free-to-air, cable and the internet, producers are looking for niche audiences, particularly in the A/B socio-economic groups that they can rust on. In this context, it is not surprising more and more of these supposedly “dumb” cultural products seek to connect with those niche audiences at deep levels and thus raise unexpected philosophical questions.
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