Deal or No Deal
I did not understand how that stupid show can be so popular, until I read this quote by David Foster Wallace in Chris Anderson’s book:
TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.
It is an illuminating thought, but I think there is more than that.
Things do not become popular automatically because they appeal to the vulgar instincts of the populace; nor do they become marginal just because they are refined.
An idea can be both noble and easy to understand. A story can be both entertaining and relevant to the human condition. They can be popular without being vulgar.
But why are most TV shows so vulgar and prurient these days?
Because their methods of ideation are extremely similar. No TV Show is ever produced without calculating risk and return, analysing marketing data, consulting previous formulas of success.
When popularity means profit, and stock price is proportional to earning growth, asking Howie Mandel to shout “Deal or No Deal” is a better deal than having a postmodern Hamlet to mutter “To Be or Not To Be”.