Golden age of TV or just rehashing of ideas in a new package?

Lurker

0 likes 9 Jul 2014

Now we have supposedly entered a new golden age of television, with show after show reaching new heights of brilliance. Clever script writing, plot and character development becoming more tangled and intricate as watching habits change to the binge variety. Allowing things that would never of seen the light of day even five years ago.

I have just rewatched a great Australian series called "Rake", and found out they are remaking it for the American market.

Why do the American television networks have to buy the rights to over seas television series and remake them? Is it snobbery in the belief they can do it better, or is it just the belief that American viewers wouldn't be able to grasp foreign accents? It isn't just this series, it happens all the time to greater and lesser success.

Any ideas as to why would be greatly appreciated.

noll

"insensitive prick!" – Danielle Algo

0 likes 9 Jul 2014

I've wondered the same about Belgian series in Dutch that are redone in the Netherlands. Even together that's an audience of less than 25 milion people at most.
I've been told it's because producers buy the rights. And their business is build on producing, so they make a new production and sell that. It involves long running contracts with a lot of people involved, instead of just reselling something that's made by others.
Too bad, because the originals are almost always better, no matter where they come from. If they were not good nobody would think about making a remake.

=== Not ALL LIVES MATTER until BLACK LIVES MATTER ===

Dani

Big-haired Bitch

0 likes 9 Jul 2014

For the same reason Bollywood remakes movies from all over the world (Bollywood also churns out more movies than any other part of the world I believe, and this may be one of the reasons). They tweak it to suit its target audience/culture and make it more relatable.

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JessicaX

Story Verifier

0 likes 10 Jul 2014

I think you are right about Americans thinking they can do it better - there doesn't appear to be any other explanation. Case in point, the recent BBC Series Broadchurch with David Tennant. American Fox Network is currently reshooting the series calling it Gracepoint but it will be staring… David Tennant. Same character, same unkempt look, only with an American accent. Maybe you are right about American's finding it hard to understand an accent! Fox promises new twists and turns from the original series and a different ending. I guess Harry Truman was right when he said, "There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know."

Buz

The Linebacker

0 likes 10 Jul 2014

Quote by Mudpies
Now we have supposedly entered a new golden age of television, with show after show reaching new heights of brilliance. Clever script writing, plot and character development becoming more tangled and intricate as watching habits change to the binge variety.

With each year I watch less television because it is so lame, predictable, and mentally unchallenging.

noll

"insensitive prick!" – Danielle Algo

0 likes 10 Jul 2014

Quote by Dani
For the same reason Bollywood remakes movies from all over the world (Bollywood also churns out more movies than any other part of the world I believe, and this may be one of the reasons). They tweak it to suit its target audience/culture and make it more relatable.

And because there needs to be singing and dancinf where in other parts of the world they just kiss or dive between the sheets ;)

=== Not ALL LIVES MATTER until BLACK LIVES MATTER ===

Dani

Big-haired Bitch

0 likes 10 Jul 2014

Quote by BiMale73

And because there needs to be singing and dancing where in other parts of the world they just kiss or dive between the sheets ;)

See?

This guy gets it! evil4

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Dani

Big-haired Bitch

0 likes 10 Jul 2014

Quote by Buz

With each year I watch less television because it is so lame, predictable, and mentally unchallenging.

Sounds like my ex-boyfriend.

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LASARDaddy

Story Verifier

0 likes 10 Jul 2014

Wow!

"The Golden Age" of television.

Television is always in "A Golden Age" because it is always a mirror for each society. They change each program to match the local mores and intelligence level.

"ALL" of it is about this:

Money, if enough people will watch it then they'll do it. But everything has to meet the local mores so dancing is used where sex is in other countries. I lived in Germany for a couple years and it was not unusual to see a woman take her top off and walk around in a bra because it was hot. Americans are mostly stupid about that. To many churches that think they have the right to tell us how to live. All based on a 2,000 year old story told by people who spent 40 days and nights starving in a desert.

We wind up with "Reality" shows that have about as much reality as a Donald Duck cartoon.

A Laugh Track so that each viewer can understand where the funny stuff is. A "ShitCom" in other words.

Soap Operas to show us that there really are miracles that can bring someone back from the dead after suffering from a "Rare And little Known" disease.

Football, baseball, basketball, hockey, those things for people who don't want to deal with life. Something so they can spend most of their time worrying about so-and-so's batting average slump.

Television!

Did any of you know that the first really viable television was a mechanical beast that had a spinning disk. Being an engineer this makes a lot of sense to me. It's done exactly the same way now and is caller "Rastering", breaking the image into small parts then reassembling it. Now it's all in electronics so it's a lot faster and can have color, picture-in-picture and other things. The mechanical ones were still in use until 1939 or so. 10 years after the electronic ones were commercially available.

In 1884, Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, a 23-year-old university student in Germany, patented the first electromechanical TV system which employed a scanning disk, a spinning disk with a series of holes spiraling toward the center, for rasterization. The holes were spaced at equal angular intervals such that, in a single rotation, the disk would allow light to pass through each hole and onto a light-sensitive selenium sensor which produced the electrical pulses. As an image was focused on the rotating disk, each hole captured a horizontal "slice" of the entire image.

The first known photograph of a moving image produced by Baird's "televisor", circa 1926 (The subject is Baird's business partner Oliver Hutchinson)

Soviet Mechanical scan TV-set (about 1931-38)

The Philco Predicta, 1958. In the collection of The Children's Museum of Indianapolis.
We had this model in 1959 and it worked for over 10 years. It quit in 1969 and cost more to fix than a new one.

This was actually built by Halicrafters but it looks like the first TV we got in 1947 or 48, a Majestic when we lived on Grande Island, New York. There were 3 stations after my father filled the attic with antenna. You couldn't get in without taking a couple down. One station out of Buffalo then 2 more, one from London Canada another from somewhere else. We had this one until we got the Philco in early 1959.

It has a round screen, blocked to make it more square. You lost image but they shot to accommodate that.

Shit, I am old.

Yeah, I watch, mostly educational but movies too. Some are entertaining.

I am always a gentleman.

mr_canuck

Active Ink Slinger

0 likes 10 Jul 2014

Quote by Mudpies

I have just rewatched a great Australian series called "Rake", and found out they are remaking it for the American market.

The US version received poor ratings. It was cancelled.

noll

"insensitive prick!" – Danielle Algo

0 likes 11 Jul 2014

Quote by LASARDaddy
Did any of you know that the first really viable television was a mechanical beast that had a spinning disk. Being an engineer this makes a lot of sense to me. It's done exactly the same way now and is caller "Rastering", breaking the image into small parts then reassembling it. Now it's all in electronics so it's a lot faster and can have color, picture-in-picture and other things. The mechanical ones were still in use until 1939 or so. 10 years after the electronic ones were commercially available.

In 1884, Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, a 23-year-old university student in Germany, patented the first electromechanical TV system which employed a scanning disk, a spinning disk with a series of holes spiraling toward the center, for rasterization. The holes were spaced at equal angular intervals such that, in a single rotation, the disk would allow light to pass through each hole and onto a light-sensitive selenium sensor which produced the electrical pulses. As an image was focused on the rotating disk, each hole captured a horizontal "slice" of the entire image.

The first known photograph of a moving image produced by Baird's "televisor", circa 1926 (The subject is Baird's business partner Oliver Hutchinson)

Soviet Mechanical scan TV-set (about 1931-38)

The Philco Predicta, 1958. In the collection of The Children's Museum of Indianapolis.
We had this model in 1959 and it worked for over 10 years. It quit in 1969 and cost more to fix than a new one.

This was actually built by Halicrafters but it looks like the first TV we got in 1947 or 48, a Majestic when we lived on Grande Island, New York. There were 3 stations after my father filled the attic with antenna. You couldn't get in without taking a couple down. One station out of Buffalo then 2 more, one from London Canada another from somewhere else. We had this one until we got the Philco in early 1959.

It has a round screen, blocked to make it more square. You lost image but they shot to accommodate that.

Shit, I am old.

Yeah, I watch, mostly educational but movies too. Some are entertaining.

Nice history lesson. Thx!

=== Not ALL LIVES MATTER until BLACK LIVES MATTER ===