What Hollywood Hasn't Figured Out About Their Audiences

Apparently, the reboot of Will & Grace aired for the first time, and I will admit, I didn't watch it. Mostly because I didn't realize it was coming on, to be truthful. I just don't do a very good job with keeping up with pop culture. To give me credit, I did know it was coming back eventually, I just didn't know when. 

From the reviews I have heard, the show's premiere was nothing but politics. This has been a huge trend lately. From politics infiltrating sports like football and basketball and... well, every sport, to music (to be fair, it's always been there), awards shows, movies, and TV shows, we're seeing an endless onslaught of the political beliefs of the actors, musicians, channels, etc. 

But these folks are missing something huge. Regardless of your political leanings, you are, most likely, tired. You've worked all day, you've dealt with screaming kids and school drama. And you just got out of what felt like the longest and stupidest election cycle on Earth. Now, your entire life is swallowed up in the political drama of a president who loves to troll everyone on Twitter and a group of people who still can't accept defeat and are using their temper tantrums to force all kinds of unneeded drama on our lives. Your social media is full of it. The nightly news is full of it. Your friends and family discuss it endlessly. You're hearing about it from co-workers. At this point, you probably feel like you are being beat over the head with it constantly, and you just want to spend 30 minutes laughing instead of being called a racist because you exist. Or maybe you want to toss some burgers on the grill and have some friends over to scream at the TV over beers while you battle over your teams and talk stats. 

You are now being told you can't have that. It's being taken away from you, because either you are sitting there watching your favorite team take a knee and having no idea what it is they are protesting since it changes depending on who you ask, or the entire pre-game show has nothing to do with sports and is just a bunch of over the hill former sportsball players preaching to you about whatever the liberal free crap that is a human right all of a sudden flavor of the week is, or your sitcom, late night show, or award show is nothing more than people acting out the ill informed conspiracy theories of the left... or you have turned off the TV or radio because you are so sick of hearing it you could scream. 

I want to laugh. Or cheer. I want to escape the political rabbit hole. I am a news junkie, to put it mildly. All this crap is flowing into my line of sight on an almost constant basis, and I actually enjoy it. But, I, too, want to sit down and watch TV sometimes and not deal with politics. Sometimes I just need a break. I can only imagine how it is for people who don't enjoy this crap as much as I do. You want to be informed and know what is going on around you, but you don't want a constant flow of it coming at you all the time. You especially don't want a constant flow only coming from one side of the isle. 

So what are you to do? How do you escape? I've noticed an up-tick in the amount of people reading. I've always been an avid reader myself, but again, sometimes I just want to let my brain rest. I watch Netflix and Hulu, and I choose older showers. Right now, I am working my way through "Numb3rs." My garden is sick of looking at me, but it's never been trimmed and pruned better. My mom's patiently waiting for me to finish building her a new kitchen table. 

But Hollywood and these sports leagues are missing the point. We watch your games or your shows or the endless amount of awards shows because we want an escape from all of this constant garbage. Heck, I didn't even watch "Last Man Standing," and that was a conservative show... because I didn't want to watch more political drama. It's 30 minutes or so where you get to kick back and forget about your daily stresses and stop being beat over the head with politics and how awful you are for not conforming. I kind of wanted to see Will & Grace again, because I actually liked the original show. But the writers and actors of that show - as well as many others - are so out of touch that they really think about five people support Trump and they don't have electricity, so they aren't watching anyway. Or they have convinced themselves that Trump voters hate everything that isn't white, straight, and male, so they won't be watching. You're wrong. We are watching. Or... we were. You don't realize it, but you have alienated a large portion of your actual viewer base, because you are too small minded to figure out who we actually are. Your own bigotry is going to cut your ratings in half. You have stereotyped a portion of your audience to fit into a view you have convinced yourself - with zero evidence - is true, because you believe "if one, than all." You even managed to alienate a large portion of the gay population, because you have decided all gay people must vote liberal. Not all of them do. Actually, more than you realize don't. 

So I'll be sticking to reruns of the Golden Girls, M*A*S*H, Murder She Wrote, and others. There are a number of shows I'd like to catch, but I don't hold much hope of them not deciding I'm a bigot for existing and using most of my precious time to tell me what I believe - that I actually don't - and attacking me based on their ill informed opinions. So I most likely won't survive the first episode because I want that entertainment escape, not that boring bigotry. 

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