What happened to the A & E Cable Channel? Isn’t that supposed to represent the Arts and Entertainment? Stuff like classical music or ballet or funny musicals. Look at the lineup of shows on this channel it looks more like criminals, addicts and misfits. Lets Tivo every minute. For example, Emily was one of the eight young, camera-ready troublemakers featured in the premier episode last week of “Beyond Scared Straight,” the new A & E series. She is 17, gets drunk, passes out in a driveway, a car nearly runs her over. Before that she exploits how she hits her mother and the time she put her fist through a double-paned window.

This train wreck then visit’s the Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, Calif. She gets scared straight of course. The ratings go through the roof with 3.7 million viewers which broke the record for the debut of an original series on the networks. Screw classical stuff this whacked out group is giving the station money. In fact lets thank the success of reality TV to drag the viewers into scenes of criminality, addiction, obsession and depression in a constant cycle of various shows.

Cable TV is where it is at if you are into viewing this kind of stuff. Channels like TLC and MTV to BRAVO are filled with these types of shows. Lately A & E has the most amount of shows featuring some type of dysfunction. This is the channel that used to show something called “Breakfast With The Arts”. Now they have 8 series 7 of which are downright disturbing. The eight is the somewhat clean one; Gene Simmons Family Jewels. Yes, I said it. The Kiss guy is the lame show.

The most effective show won an Emmy for outstanding reality programming. It is “Intervention”. A show that features meth addiction. Its success is directly related to the profiling and helping of more than 130 addicts. Then there is “Jimbo” a show about a thug hooked up on painkillers. If that is not enough go into the homes of people and watch “Hoarders” if you can even look into the wrecks that some humans live in. The season finale of this one features a woman with 30 cats and a man with 2,500 rats.

Don’t expect things to get any better. “Storage Wars” I wrote about in a blog on Friday, December 10, 2010.  Basically is lets sell your junk when you are down and out and can’t afford to pay to save your junk. Or watch “The First 48” if you are into murder investigations. “Dog the Bounty Hunter” finds pathetic people who are more pitiful than dangerous. The most recent is “Heavy” yeah lets pick on the morbidly obese too. It’s all American.