oldTV

All this week I’ll be looking at “oldTV.” That’s not television that’s old, but television that old people watch. This kind of television is generally marked by the following: lack of relevance, void of loud music, reaffirms the world has gone to hell and police throwing tack-strips onto freeways.

In the 20 years Cops has been on Fox, over 700 episodes of the reality drama have been produced. The show was created in the early 80’s by John Langley and his producing partner Malcolm Barbour. They got the idea after accompanying police officers on a drug raid in South Florida. The pitch for the show surfaced during a writer’s strike and Fox quickly jumped at the chance for an action pack police drama that didn’t need scripts.

I remember discussing Cops during seminar when I was a student at The Evergreen State College. Cops was the target of much scorn and ridicule because the show focused exclusively on poor people—no white collar crime or wealthy suspects. Now, I had not seen every episode of the show back then nor have I seen all 700 episodes now, so I cannot say, with any certainly they the show focuses exclusively on poor people breaking the law. But who cares. Crime is Crime. Whether you’re rich or poor you shouldn’t break the law! Besides who wants to see rich accountants arrested on tax fraud, when there are shirtless drug addicts just begging to be hauled off to prison.