Daniel eaten by the lions

Daniel eaten by the lions

“Book of Daniel” has been canceled.

Huh, didn’t see that coming.

Okay, I’m not interested in talking about that TV show that everyone’s all hepped up about, “Book of Daniel.” Frankly, what makes it different from all the other offensive material that appears on TV all the time?

Here’s what the producers hope happens: They produce a show that antagonizes a certain sector of the public that won’t watch the show anyway. This gets them lots of free publicity. A couple of affiliates in very small markets refuse to air the show. This gets them more publicity. Now when the show airs more people will tune in to see what the big deal is and they get big launch night ratings. Meanwhile, since the show plummets in the ratings, it lasts half a season because people who want to watch religiously themed shows are generally those of a conservative bent, and so there’s no natural audience for it.

Or we can just ignore the junk from the beginning and it will fail even faster and won’t be on the air for even half a season. And then rather than always being the negative reaction, we can instead spend our time and effort doing the positive thing by supporting the good things that TV networks do and giving them good publicity.

This is not new. Every time one of these shows come out I get emails from well-intentioned, nice people who want me to join the outrage, but I’ll save my outrage for the truly outrageous. Otherwise I’d get burned out on the everyday idiocy.

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