Television

I thought that it was interesting that Stanley Cavell made the observation that television is expressed by the massive repetitiveness of its formats for talk, and the amount of talk. He talks about how television is repetitious such as the different talk shows with its hosts and guests or broadcasts of sports events. Then he asks the question “is this excitement and education sufficient to account for the willingness to tune them in endlessly, for the pleasure taken endlessly in them?” I obvious answer to me when I read this question was yes. Not as much in the recent year, but I used to spend hours watching TV a day, because TV offered me something much more interesting and entertaining than other things available for me to do at the time. I reason I watch less TV now is because things on TV are very repetitious, to me every talk show such as Rachael Rays or Oprah’s talk shows, or the “reality shows” they have on MTV or VH1. However, from time to time, I do catch myself still watching these different reality shows no matter how similar the show, the drama, is to last seasons. My question is would people spend less time on TV if there wasn’t such a large variety of all these “similar shows?” Or would we adapt to it, and still watch and spend just as much time on TV because it is still the best source of entertainment.
After reading the entire article, I found myself confused about what Cavell was trying to say. I was especially lost when he started talking about the genres-as- cycle and medium. What does he mean when he talks about the different genres as cycles and at one point he describes them as characterized as evanescent? And he makes a lot of references to shows and movies that I've never seen before, i guess that further made the reading more confusing.