"Background television" and the crucial service it serves for a modern viewing audience
In reading coverage of the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike, I stumbled across the term “background television,” which was being used to describe a specific kind of episodic, scripted TV programming. If you’re over 30 and had cable, you’ve absolutely encountered background TV before, typically on USA Network.
Stop me if this sounds familiar: an hour-long show, drama, but not too serious. There’s a regular cast of characters but their relationships aren’t the main point of the show, they’re just kind of off to the side as flavoring. Everyone is good-looking, but not unreasonably so. Situations are recognizable, but probably not something you’ve ever experienced personally. Central to their weekly drama is some main industry: policework, medicine, firefighting, law practice.
Royal Pains. Suits. White Collar. Or the daddy of all background television, Law & Order.
What distinguishes a background tv show is that it’s the kind of thing you’re happy to leave on once you stumble across it. You might never seek out an episode of Burn Notice, but if you’re channel surfing (hiyo!) and hear “When you’re a spy…” you’ll stop flicking through options and stay put. Background tv is safe, nonthreatening, easy to parse, and entertaining. It’s engaging enough to hold your interest, but not so involved that you can’t catch up quickly if something distracts you for a minute or five. It’s pleasant. It’s something you like having on in the background (thus the name) while you do other things like make dinner, fold laundry, play video games, etc.
It is also increasingly rare, as it’s methodically being replaced with reality shows and swing-for-the-fences prestige TV. The former are cheap and relatively easy to crank out, while the latter can woo new subscribers to streaming networks, which is all anyone seems to really care about these days. This is, in my opinion, very bad for the viewing public. Not because of the artistic merit of your average background tv show, which is questionable, but because that kind of programming is really great for when you’re depressed.
Look a lot’s happened in the past…what are we calling it, seven years? People are at (or perhaps more realistically, past) their operating limits. Mentally and emotionally exhausted, they simply don’t have the resources they once did to locate and sustain mental stimulation. Background television is perfect viewing in this mental state. Just enough to keep you from pondering the state of the world, but not so much that if you zone out for a moment to question your life choices that you’ll lose the plot. It’s friendly and nice and doesn’t ask much of you at all. It probably won’t make you sad or stress you out, and nobody on social media is fighting about it. It is, unlike virtually everything else in your orbit these days, blessedly easy.
People will always want and need easy entertainment to keep them company, and television often gets asked to fill that role. Podcasts can do it, too, and lord knows there are enough of them, but TV has two things that give it a slight edge over podcasts: it comes with pictures to give you something to look at and streaming services let you hit a button once and watch all night. One episode rolls into another into another, without you having to make a choice. It’s one less thing for you to have to take responsibility for, and some days, that’s the boost you need to keep going.
I’m not saying that the only times people watch and enjoy these shows is when they’re stressed out, tired, depressed, or otherwise out of mental sorts. But I do think that the service this kind of show provides for people in those states of mind is absolutely invaluable. If it goes away, something precious will be lost; a form of support that many people wouldn’t be able to bring themselves to ask for, if they even knew how to put it into words. “I need you to distract me, but in fun way that’s also soothing” is a complex and nebulous idea and not something the average person is going to be able to do on demand. Psych, Major Crimes, and Monk, on the other hand, are happy to oblige.
It’s worth mentioning that what once used to be considered prestige TV has also become background TV. Oh, you thought people rewatched Friends a million times because it requires multiple viewings to appreciate the nuance of its storytelling? Sorry, no, “we were on a break” ain’t that deep. Friends is good-looking and formulaic and imposes nothing upon the viewer. CSI, a show once so massive it ran for 15 years and spawned three spin-offs, has become a perfect blueprint for background television. The investigators are mix-and-match, intrinsic to the action yet also totally interchangeable. Is that the one who likes studying bugs or the one whose dad was in the mob? Doesn’t matter.
As audiences shifted from watching network television — your CBS, ABC, NBC — and spent more and more time on streamers, the types of shows being put forth as “prestige” changed. Now we get short-run series that crank up the production values: Queen’s Gambit and Euphoria and Sandman. Yet ask yourself: 10 years from now, are you going to fire up Game of Thrones on whatever Max is called by then and just leave it running until you feel like you can fall asleep? What about The Last of Us? Probably not.
And it’s not just that both of those shows are extremely violent, they’re just…they’re a lot. When you’re capable of absorbing that, a lot is wonderful! A lot gives you something to think about, talk about, roll around in your brain; a lot can be a real gift. But there are times when a lot is just too much, and in those moments, something else needs to step in to fill the gap. Something simple. Where you don’t have to remember the character names to keep track of what’s going on. Gilmore Girls. NCIS. iZombie.
I fear that background TV is going to go away because executives (and, to be fair, audiences) won’t realize how precious it is until it’s all gone. Eventually, someone will crunch the numbers and ponder why streaming audiences are spending all their precious viewing minutes on stuff from the 90s and 00s. Maybe they’ll figure it out. I hope they do. In the meantime, I’ll be starting up Stargate SG-1 from the beginning. Again.