As a kid, I thoroughly enjoyed watching “Arthur,” “Reading Rainbow,” and other PBS shows each morning before elementary school. These days, it seems that these educational shows have lost popularity among youngsters, and have been replaced with more entertainment based, unoriginal, stereotypical, and just plain annoying shows, epitomized by those on Disney Channel. A part of my soul dies as I watch the children I babysit waste time viewing the trashy entertainment based shows that are on TV today.
It all started when our cable company gave us three months of free cable as a promotional deal. Though I don’t nearly have enough time for TV, even I was elated when I discovered the endless number of premium channels. For my siblings, watching the new channels was time well spent, (it seemed), away from homework. However, I soon realized that they were no longer interested in watching non-cable shows because they found entertainment based shows like “So Random” more interesting.
Now, I’ve done my research. Though sitting down to analyze “Shake It Up” or the new “Hannah Montana Forever” is not even close to my cup of tea, I had to for the merit and sake of giving decent arguments for this article.
First of all, why does every actress look the same? And why does every actor/actress want to rack up a record deal on top of their acting contracts? I am pretty certain these actors/actresses are trying to mature faster than need be. These shows also overemphasize clique boundaries, (the nerds are so obviously cast out among the popular girl cliques, or having the jocks beat up the nerds), which I think is very annoying. Another element to this Disney Channel madness is that most of the shows glorify dating and being girl/boy crazy at such a young age.
If the majority of young people are starting to watch all entertainment based shows, which seems to be the case, then I’m pretty concerned. I feel old when I say “Reading Rainbow” or “Arthur” will and always will be the best, but it’s true! Those shows had so much legitimacy and merit, and I never felt the need to fit into a preconceived mold of a stereotypical clique, image, or behavior afterwards