All New!
Near my office is a large billboard for NBC. Today I noticed that it’s featuring NBC’s “Quality Dramas at 10 p.m.” The electronic segment of the billboard cried out in large letters: “ALL NEW ER TONIGHT AT 10!”
Which made me wonder, at what point did “new” become a concept so weak that it must always be buttressed by “all-“? Is there a rash of “new” TV shows out there that are simply old parts chopped up and slapped back down into confusing, disjointed bits?
Then I remembered that I had once seen an episode of Friends advertised as “all-new,” only to discover that it was a clip show. If television shows were meat, they’d be shutting NBC down, slaughtering the cattle, and fumigating the plant.
Stay tuned — all-new installments of TeeVee are coming soon. We’re talking to you, Rob Lotterstein.