It's hard to build community around mediocre and mundane writing.
I mean its a weekly occurrence that somebody will complain that Top Gear was on last night - and you just sit back and wait for the complaints. But if you start to pay attention to everyones concerns, you end up with something bland and boring. So you sort of have to ignore everybody in order to do the show how we want to do it.
There has been an obvious effort to play it safe, to make 'Bonanza' a good family show that would offend no one and hit a consistent level of mediocrity.
And it's exactly what's wrong with the radio. It's like...anything that tries to appeal to everybody always ends up sounding so cheap.
Generally the whole entertainment business now is bland.
When a culture is being dumbed down as effectively as ours is, its narrative arts (literature, film, theatre) seem to vacillate between the brutal and the bland, sometimes in the same work.
I think that, given a real choice, people would like to hear something interesting, not something bland and right down the middle.
People have this delusion that everything has to be for everybody at all times. Every album must be liked by everybody, and every TV show must be liked by everybody, and every movie must be liked by everybody. Everything then becomes bland.
A lot of the television industry is so cookie-cutter. In general, there are so many shows that are easy and bland to watch. You can tune in at any time and know exactly where you are in the story arc because it's pretty much the same every week.
If you could taste words, most corporate websites, brochures, and sales materials would remind you of stale, soggy rice cakes: nearly calorie free, devoid of nutrition, and completely unsatisfying.
