Deal or No Deal, so popular, so dumb. I did not understand it, and then I read this quote by David Foster Wallace (in The Long Tail):

TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.

It is an illuminating thought, but I think there is more than that.

Things do not become popular because they appeal to the vulgar instincts of the populace; nor do they become marginal just because they are refined.

An idea can be both noble and easy to understand. A story can be both entertaining and relevant to the human condition. They can be popular without being vulgar.

But why are most TV shows so vulgar and prurient these days?

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