Late  last night, I found myself watching an infomercial.  A pretty bad  infomercial – not that any of them are really any good!  I had run just  shy of 7 marathons in the last 8 days and was in desperate need of a  shower and some amenities.  So I found a cheap motel and after washing  my considerably dirty body, I crawled into bed and unwound a bit in  front of the tv.  I obviously haven’t watched much tv over the past 5  months and it was reaffirming that I’m not missing much.  I found a  movie that helped turn my brain off for a bit, but afterwards,  everything was garbage.  I heard a couple of months ago that some of the  well-known soap operas are going off the air.  And Oprah… where will we  go in tv land without Oprah?!  With the slowing down of reality show  successes, networks are scrambling to find their niche – to find  programming that engages as many demographics as possible.  Even  watching the news these days seems painful.  One network, as part of  their primetime news hour, plays ‘humourous’ youtube clips.  Perhaps  it’s to inject some fun into an otherwise dire newscast full of murders,  war, and all else deemed ‘doom-and-gloom’.  But covering the  sensational seems to have a broader scope than ever.  In Jaron Lanier’s  book You Are Not A Gadget, the Bear Stearns report says:

[blockquote size=”full” align=”left” byline=””]For as long as most can recall, the entertainment industry has lived By the axiom “content is king.”  However, no one company has proven      consistently capable of producing “great content,” as evidenced by volatility in TV ratings…[/blockquote]

Someone  else can dissect why I didn’t flick the channel last night and instead  wasted half an hour of my life I’ll never get back.  The realization for  me is that as much as I think I have it tough sometimes out on the road  – that the ’84 Citation doesn’t quite live up to a real bed, a real  shower and the other comforts that come along with a home, I’m really  looking forward to getting back out on the road.  My program of choice  for the next couple of weeks will be Superior.  Big open water, stunning  sunsets, rugged Canadian Shield – I don’t think it gets much better!   We can sometimes get sucked into a world of garbage because it simply  seems to be the norm in tv land (with a few exceptions of course!).  But  outside – outside in our own backyard holds so much wonder and so much  realness.  It’s a reminder for me that being outside will always have  the greatest content.