Funny, but like with 'Network' it becomes less clever each year

I loved Stay Tuned when it first premiered in '92. And I still like it to this day, though not as much as I used to. This is of course by no fault of the movie itself, but rather, by the changes in television as time marches on.

When Network came out in the late '70s, it was such a phenomenal satire of the television industry. A fourth place network so desperate for ratings that it will put anything on the air. Unfortunatly, three decades later the prophecy of that film has come to fruition by way of the FOX network.

Same problem with Stay Tuned. With such reality show crap like Who Wants to Marry my Dad? and The Next Action Star, is Autopsies of the Rich and Famous really that farfetched anymore?

With adult oriented cartoons like Cartoon Network's late-night Adult Swim line-up, Spike TV's Cartoons for F*&*ing Adults, or other wink-at-the-audience programs like South Park or The Simpsons, is the animated sequence in Stay Tuned that unique in this day and age? Well, with the exception of the fact that cartoon legend Chuck Jones directed the sequence.

Oh, naturally I'm not complaining. Like I said, I still like this movie. However, an entire decade of relaxing television standards and anything goes fare has made the once outrageous nature of this film seem relatively tame by comparision. Stay Tuned is still a fun movie and I think John Ritter and Pam Dawber give great performances (I just wished the producers would have ditched the annoying kids). It's just sad that what was once such a shocking and provacative look at television has become numbed over the course of time.