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.
Technorati Tags: anti-Christian, media, TV
I couldn’t agree more.
I once publicly complimented the Catholic League for its action in preventing a sacriligious cartoon episode from airing again. Which elicited comments that that wasn’t good enough.
Defending the Faith doesn’t always mean getting all riled up. Sometimes it means what the Spirit said through Saint Paul: heap blessings on those who hurt you. Then go on with your life.
I mean…it’s a TV show! As Dom says, don’t draw attention to it and it’ll die its own death a lot sooner.
Which good things that the TV networks do???
;^) I’m sure there are a few – just don’t watch much TV anymore myself, we only have super-basic cable through our building and don’t have EWTN, just major US and Canadian networks (though not PBS – still some things there I’d watch if I could).
Good points… We do need to spend more effort supporting the good programs. HOWEVER, to just ignore shows like “The Book of Daniel” and “Nothing Sacred” won’t necessarily mean that networks will have a change of heart and produce real Catholic/Christian-friendly programming. It will just get replaced a similar show down the road.
I just finished the book “Behind the Screen,” and they have some excellent insights into this from writers of shows themselves. It would be good for writers and producers of shows like “The Book of Daniel” to get letters from viewers that provide good, constructive criticism. Acknowledge their attempt to reach Christians, but then give them a, b, c and d that would make their show more authentic and good, appealing to us. It’s easy to rip things, but not so easy to show how it can be improved. They may be influenced by your letter, they may not. But I think that would be far more effective than these silly e-mail petition campaigns that just get ignored by Hollywood.
Again, I recommend everyone interested in this issue to read “Behind the Screen” by Spencer Lewerencz and Barbara Nicolosi.
All of the comments so far have much to recommend them. My personal reaction to the well-intentioned effort to boycott and protest “The Book of Daniel” was 1) to not watch it and 2) not protest it. Why? The Episcopalians portrayed in this pathetic TV show stopped being Christians a long time ago. It would be a waste of time to ask the networks to clean up a show portraying a denomination which has stopped being true to essential Christian truths and beliefs. Heck, the Archbishop of Canterbury is a practicing Druid!