Hello everyone and welcome to America under the Microscope advance. Hi, Lulu.
Hi.
So we're gonna continue talking about TV in America and we're gonna start off with what Americans are now calling the golden age of American television.
Why do you call it the golden age? Actually, if you think about TV in our sense, we would think the golden age of TV has long gone.
Well. We think of this is the golden age of television because it's about the quality of programming that's been coming out in the past I would say, ten fifteen years, there has been a shift to much higher quality storytelling, higher quality production and even getting really good quality actors to perform in these TV shows.
This is one thing that always strikes me as quite special because when you think of TV, you obviously think it's a, well, for lack of better word, it's a lower grade compared with movies.
Well, this used to be the truth actually a lot of people felt, oh, you're in television because you're not good enough to be in films. But this isn't the case anymore. You get these award winning movie actors now choosing to go and do television work and you get television actors moving on to do high quality films.
So boundary is more blurred now essentially, and then in the olden days you hear people say, you know, some actresses or actors they're saying oh I'm in movies or film industry, I cannot downgrade myself and do TV work. But nowadays you have things like, a case in point Big Little Lies, I don't know if you watch that.
I've never seen the show but I heard of it.
Yeah. It's a really, it's a hit show and if you haven't watched it, I highly recommend it. And it's got those really big name actresses, movie actresses like Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Reese Witherspoon. Yeah. So I think they bring that sort of, let the level of work they showed in films into TV, into the arena of TV.
And also plus now TV programs are having more money to use so they can pay the actors tons of money, like the Friends actors, they got paid a million dollars an episode near the end of it, and in Big Bang Theory, those actors got paid pretty close to the same.
One million dollar per person per episode.
Yeah. Crazy money and even the shows themselves have budgets for special effects. So they got a lot of money to use, to make better quality programing.
Talking about story lines actually, you said you know higher quality stories. There's always something that I wonder. So you have so many episodes in one season. Has it all been planned out from the beginning or is it like ongoing?
That depends from show to show. There are some shows that yes, everything has been planned out and story-boarded and all this stuff, other shows not so much. Usually you can tell by the quality of the storytelling and whether things you know, yeah this kind of, follows along nicely and seriously, that's just kind out of nowhere. So it does depend. Some shows are designed to not be, you know, just a continuous story that we call, what do we call them? They're basically standalone shows. So each episode is its own little story.
Self-contained.
So that's what I want.
But things like these popular, let's say sitcoms like the Big Bang Theory. You can see that sometimes the storyline is changing in a way that you didn't expect them to change. And sometimes it's perhaps because they even changed the screenwriter; they've changed the writers for these.
Most likely, yeah, things like that.
For example, for one of the actors or actresses, a dispute with the studio and then they will kill him off or kill her off or send them away. So they're disappeared from the show.
That's a good way to fire an actor: We will kill your character!
Yeah. So you talked about the golden age of American TV. How do they make money, because you usually think of TV as making money through advertising?
Well they make money based on which channel they are on. They are on network TV program then yes they make it from advertising. And if you have more people watching, then advertisers will pay more money to put their shows at that time. If their shows on HBO, it's premium. So HBO just like here's money. So like Game of Thrones, they just got money from HBO and there's no advertising needed.
Yeah. And I suppose they have loads of money from all these the entire franchise essentially. There's a lot of paraphernalia.
And you can get money from all kinds of places.
Apart from drama and comedy, I notice that you also produce an inordinate amount of reality TV.
Manufactured reality, that's how I would like to call it.
Manufactured. So it's not really reality.
Not really. Um, it is, okay, so yes they do put real people into these situations, but they do get, you know suggestions from the producers or the producers are trying to push for certain things to get drama, to make it more interesting for the viewers and they use deceptive editing to make things seem spontaneous, things like this.
But it's actually scripted, more or less.
More or less, yeah, and it's extremely popular. I think of it as kind of like junk food. It's easy to take in; it tastes good, but not good for you.
Yeah. And I suppose one reason why reality TV is popular, it's popular in China as well, it's because reality TV sometimes you see a lot of just everyday people and then you get to laugh at them. When you get to laugh at, there's, you know, silly decisions and stuff. So you kind of feel like a secretive superiority about yourself.
I suppose that's true, personally I try to avoid this kind of program.
No, reality TV is not really my thing. You really do have reality TV about everything, about cooking, about dating, about parenting …
There's reality TV about you know buying a house, there's reality TV about living in a house with strangers, survivor where you put people in like an island and there's so many different kinds.
Some of the reality TVs are fine. I just recently recommended to the audience one reality TV shows. It's a makeover show, it's Queer Eye. So sometimes there was positive energy.
Still not my cup of tea.

Well, so going on to the rating system. See this is one of the things that I think people are talking about it in China and saying that we should perhaps have some rating system for TV and films, so it's easier, for example, for parents to know which TV or which movie's good for their kids, is suitable for their kids. So your TV rating system is different from your movie.
The movie rating system and TV rating system are not the same. There are some similarities, but the TV actually has more steps to it. So they start off with what we call TVY, Y is for youth.
Youth, so young kids.
These are gonna be like if anything is TVY, this is meant for small children, it's most likely going to be educational programming or if you want to think of a popular show like Peppa Pig, that will be TVY.
TVY, and then?
We have Y7, which is still seven like seven years old. So this is still children's programming, but meant for slightly older kids. So there might be a little bit more you know cartoon violence in it. Then there's TVG for general audience. And you'll find this on a lot of educational things like a cooking show.
Oh, so it's basically like a non-descriptive, they wouldn't touch upon anything sensitive.
Yeah. So like a nature show would be TVG or things like that. Then you have PG.
Parental guidance?
Correct, and this will be a lot of things like family dramas. Family dramas, family comedies tend to be PG.
Um, because there are certain contents in these that you need the parents to kind of walk their kids through or explain to their kids, for example perhaps about death, perhaps about violence, and then?
TV fourteen, which is meant for fourteen years old, so now you get to show that more violence in them, more coarse language and then you get to TVMA, mature audiences.
Mature audience, purely for adults.
So yeah, so I imagine for most of the audience started the TV show Game of Thrones.
Game of Thrones is definitely an MA.
people get their heads cut off, there's nudity, there's a sex in it, so yes, TVMA is definitely for adults only.
And you always hear that, before you start and watching a TV show you always hear, viewer discretion advised.
Yes, basically we are protecting ourselves so you know, if you let your children watch it, we warned you.
Yeah it's your fault now, and then so all of these rating, who raise them though.
Uh, there is a TV rating board. So if you want to broadcast it on television, you have to submit to the ratings board and they will give you the rating and certain channels will not show certain ratings. So obviously a channel that's you know meant for kids is not going to show anything about G because …
Oh so it's a dedicated channel.
Right.
What about the, you know, sometimes at the beep was the swear words. What is that about? Do you actually hear them on TV?
Uh. Yes. So like we mentioned in the previous the basic episode about the talk shows, right? Well sometimes you can't control what people say on a talk show and they will say inappropriate language. So what we call swear words or curse words. OK, normally you can't see these on television without upping your rating system. So but word, I'm not gonna say the words but though F words, other words, this will automatically move you up to mature audiences.
Okay. So your rating would change.
So they beep them out, so the rating doesn't get changed.
I see. So in the end, let's talk about the attitudes towards TV. Now for parents, what kind of attitude do parents have? Do they have a generally positive attitude or negative attitude?
I would actually say it's neutral. Most parents would say that TV has its benefits because if you're a parent for the small children and you need to say, cook a dinner, TV is one way where you can, you know …
Your babysitter.
Occupy our child for a few minutes. Uh but parents do tend to limit, at least some parents do, limit how much television their kids watch. They will also, you know limit the programming they watch. Obviously most parents are not going to let their kids watch Game of Thrones.
Do you not have parental lock?
Absolutely all TVs have parental lock, and Americans program them based on the rating system. So you can tell the TV no TVMA, no TV fourteen, TVMA.
Actually even though we don't have the same sort of rating system, but now we all have parental lock for parents to protect their kids from inappropriate contents. All right, so that's all for TV. I know some of our listeners really like your English language TV shows. So feel free to leave a comment in the comment section about your favorite and least favorite TV shows. Let us know what you think.
Bye everyone.
See you next time. Bye.

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