• by Lydia Loizides , Op-Ed Contributor, August 6, 2007

So, four weeks post the birth of my second child, I can write this statement in all honesty: Television, for the most part, is mediocre at best. I am not sure how many of you are up at 2:30 a.m. these days (or 3:30, 4:30 or 5:30 a.m. for that matter) but I can tell you this: there is little to watch. I have my DVR searching and scouring for content at all hours of the day to little or no avail. Why is that? Has television become too cookie-cutter, so formulaic, so predictable that it doesn't matter what channel you are on -- it's all just a different shade of gray?

Now, I know that it is the summer doldrums and that the best of cable is on during "prime-time" hours but even when I take into account "Rescue Me," "The Riches," "The Closer," "Iron Chef America," "Entourage," "Flight of the Conchords" (well, all HBO and Showtime programming, actually) and reruns of "Coupling" -- I am still left with a void. A movie here, a VOD title there -- I am left wanting more, wanting something different, something challenging. Even my 5-year-old son is bored with television and has taken to rating commercials based on sound tracks. For those keeping score, "The Van" campaign for Honda is a big hit in our house, and I would like to think that my son is gifted since he now knows all the words to Parliament's "P. Funk (Wants To Get Funked Up)."

But more important, what this experience has taught me (besides that newborns sleep in two-hour increments, a fact that I had clearly forgotten) is that there is plenty of room for improvement. There is room in this 2000-channel universe to break out of the formatted content box and pursue a higher caliber of programming. With the coming of the new television season, I am looking forward to discovering those two or three break-out shows, to watch the sleeper coming alive and captivating an audience, members of which will have conversations around the water cooler the morning after airing because they actually watched it in real time and couldn't, or simply wouldn't, watch it any other way (I call that The Sopranos Effect). I am looking forward to a whole new landscape of storylines that will transcend the obvious, and dialogue that will rise above the lowest common denominator. And most of all, I am looking forward to sleeping, if not through the night, at least for a three-hour stretch.