Why You'll Always See New York City on Satellite TV

New York City is continually dumped on by the rest of the United States. The city of the rude and obnoxious, of the human freak show, of rat-infested streets and avenues run rampant with criminals. What every New Yorker would like to know, however, is why is it that seemingly every television show on satellite TV and elsewhere seems to be set in New York City? Why does so-called "Middle America" both love to insult the Big Apple, and yet at the same time gobble up every program set there?

Within minutes one can reel off scores of popular television shows set in New York City: "Seinfeld," "Friends," "Everybody Loves Raymond," "King of Queens." ,There are also "Gossip Girl," "Ugly Betty, "30 Rock" and "Will & Grace." In an earlier era, "Rhoda," "That Girl," "All in the Family" and its spinoffs, and even "The Cosby Show" were set in New York. It is not sufficient to account for the heavy presence New York City will play in any sweep of programming on satellite TV channels by chalking it up to "East Coast" bias among television producers. After all, the first rule of television programming is that people won't watch something that they don't want to see. Isn't that why these very same "East Coast" types complain about the coarsening of television, after all?

The answer to this question of why New York City is so dominant in television programming can be seen by posing another question: if people in America's "heartland" hate New York so much, wouldn't they love to watch programs set in Nebraska, rural Missouri, or other "wholesome" locales that remind themselves of the places in America they treasure so dearly? Why isn't every television show "Little House on the Prairie?"

The answer, of course, is that a television show about Nebraska would be boring, even (or especially) to people who live here. New York City is where drama that makes for good television happens; it simply would not be plausible for a television family living in a small Midwestern town to meet wacky neighbor after wacky neighbor, or for singles there to be constantly dating people with strange habits, or for people there to spend an entire evening waiting for a table in a Chinese restaurant, as did the characters in one episode of Seinfeld. This is one of the complaints that people make, for instance, about the later seasons of "Roseanne," which was set in a small town in the Midwest; the latter seasons, in which a series of very odd things happened to Roseanne and her family, were simply unrealistic in the context of her town. In the end, Americans' love-hate relationship with New York, as expressed by the programming on satellite TV at any time of day or night, expresses a clear ambivalence about the diversity that to many people makes the country great.

www.CannonSatellite.com can set you and your family up with an HD television service that will deliver programming set or not set in New York City, as you desire.