Why Do I Even Watch TV Anymore...

...when it only raises my blood-pressure to unhealthy levels? No, it's not the quality of the programming I'm bitching about. It's the amount of promos and garbage you have to visually weed-through to get to the actual entertainment.

Here's a fun fact about the basic cable network TNT: They have a show called "The Closer" that they really want you to watch. And to make sure of that, they'll run constant obtrusive promos during all their other shows (97% of that being "Law & Order" reruns). "Hey I don't remember Kyra Sedgewick making an appearance in this episode as the woman who blocks the establishing CHUNG CHUNG text before a scene change." This is just one example out of many. Why even get into the story or action on screen when your attention is just going to be yanked away by this crap?

I only wish it were technically possible to create a "pop-up blocker" for TV shows the way they have them for websites.

Here's my rule: The more graphical junk you throw up on the screen, the less inclined I am to watch your programs. That includes the "rating" symbol. (It does not need to be the entire upper-left quadrant of the screen to be readable.) I think I stopped watching MTV around the time they subscribed to the "kitchen-sink" approach of decorating their broadcasts (back then, the shows were still semi-watchable). It has since become like a typical teenage girl's overly-decorated MySpace profile, except only .001% as brilliant.