Wired magazine interviewed Jon Stewart, acerbic host of Comedy Central's Daily Show, a witty political and cultural review that's loved by just about everyone who watches it. That group doesn't include me because I only have basic cable, and I only got that because - snurvulously - my total monthly bill for high-speed Internet and other "services" from Comcast would be MORE without it. Most of what's on TV is crap, says Stewart, and fancier wired video content delivery systems are basically a yawn. The Wired interview also includes Daily Show producer Ben Karlin.

(Wired): What do you make of the quality of television now?

Karlin: I firmly believe that the number of quality programs on television right now is probably higher than it has ever been.

Stewart: It's a constant level of goodness.

(Wired): What is that level?

Stewart: I'd say it's around 12 percent. I'd say 12 percent goodness, 88 percent crapola. I'm calling it the Goodness Theorem. The goodness is a constant, like pi, and it stays that way. What happens is, as the environment expands around it, the goodness expands at the exact same rate. So the ratio of goodness to crapola remains the same. And the percentage of goodness on network TV is probably the same as 30 years ago.

...(Wired):...there's a lot of venture capital going into video-delivery technologies that could allow more shows to go online. Isn't there something promising about new ways to watch television?

Stewart: Sure. But how much do you need TV to be available in convenient form? It already is convenient - we have the DVR (digital video recorder). Do you need TV on your watch as you walk from your cell phone to your BlackBerry? At what point do we get saturated enough to say, "OK, I get it! We can get anything we want at any time! Let's go sit around a large table and eat a meal in silence"? Sometimes this s*** (is) just overkill.

Thank you, kind sir! Would that the breathless hype-sters of the entertainment and technology trade journals and newspaper business sections pause to truly reflect on thy wisdom, thusly expressed. Video-enabled Net phones are as essential as microwaveable chili and macaroni on a stick.

As if I, or any other actually sentient being, would really want to watch TV on a computer. Lawdy, I can barely stand to turn on the TV in our family room, unless there's a DVD piped into it. Yes, with video search coming online, and with the right network configuration, I guess I'd be able to send selected snippets to my TV for viewing later. If I cared enough to troll the Web for some of the approximately 12 percent of video that's any good, that is. Sorry, I'd rather read a book on my deck. Unplug. Repeat. Unplug. Repeat.....

Here's another thing I don't get. Daily newspapers have TV critics on staff who travel to L.A. almost weekly it seems, to review new shows, at least 88 percent of which, as Stewart notes, are crud. Between these sneak previews and their other articles on TV shows, a huge amount of newspaper real estate and ink is wasted on utter effluvia.

At least TV mostly ignores the newspapers, except to steal real news stories from them.

TO COMMENT: The regular comment feature is not in operation now. However, you can e-mail me your comments on this post, at the address accessed under "Contact," at the top of my "Main" page. I'll add them, here.

Jim Miller: Interesting to see Sturgeon's Law (90 percent of everything is crud) pop up again. Wonder if Stewart knows the origin? Link here. My own view, by the way, is that the percentage varies by field.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at August 23, 2005 11:12 AM