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"You kids don't know what you want! That's why you're still kids — 'cause you're stupid!"
Fry: Married? Jenny can't get married.
Leela: Why not? It's clever, it's unexpected.
Fry: But that's not why people watch TV. Clever things make people feel stupid, and unexpected things make them feel scared.
Common belief among TV executives. Everyone who watches TV has the intellect of Beavis And Butthead.
Root cause of 95.6% of Executive Meddling.
Especially common among shows intended for children. Kids can legitimately be said to be less knowledgeable than adults, but this leads to shows that are condescending and didactic.
Many of these things are also done by Media Watchdogs thinking the same way.
Obviously, some viewers are morons, but executives seem to place the entire TV-watching segment of the human race squarely in the idiot pile.
On top of that, not only are viewers stupid, they are also intolerant of people and things unlike themselves, ignorant, and have the attention span of a goldfish.
Leads to:
Interestingly enough, though, this meta-trope sounds worse than it is, at least currently; actually comparing and contrasting the entertainment of today with the entertainment of the past will show that overall, shows demand more of your mind than they used to, probably because we'd be bored if it didn't and partly because things like recorders or the Internet now make it possible to examine shows in more depth more easily than in the past (read Stephen Johnson's book Everything Bad Is Good For You for an eloquent explanation beyond the scope of this article).
Of course, all that means is that the bar for entertainment is raised even higher, and that viewers will get annoyed more and more easily if things like Infodump happen a few times too many. Additionally, the caveat about this being what executives believe about viewers was, at least at one point, not particularly untrue. In the era of the "Big Three" networks (NBC, ABC and CBS), before VCRs and the like, shows really were literally designed to be simple and supposedly "unobjectionable" narratives, for fear of making that one third of the entire TV viewing audience tune out and tune in to one of the competitors. This is why television quickly gained the nicknames Boob Tube and Idiot Box from intellectuals who found television pandering and simple.
Note that this viewpoint is not particular to network executives. Question some point of continuity for a children's show with a sizeable adult Periphery Demographic, and you are pretty much guaranteed one of the periphery adult fans will insist that it's "because it's a kid's show and they don't expect kids to notice." Ironically, kids are often far more aware of such mistakes, not because kids are per se "smarter" than we expect, but because not having things like a job, wife, or "real life" to distract them, they tend to watch their favorites much more obsessively and with more of their minds fully devoted to analysis. Consequently, children can put even the strictest editors to shame with their awkward questions.
For when the viewers really are morons, see Fan Dumb. For the less common polar-opposite, see Viewers Are Geniuses. And for the fortunate cases where it works, see Adaptation Distillation.
Examples:
- Although perhaps not considered such at the time, a tedious explanation of DNA and forensic science can be found in some episodes of Quincy ME.
- This was parodied in Futurama where an evil A.I. residing inside a laptop computer and three "execubots" are in charge of a television network, and describe their functions, one of which being to "underestimate middle-America".
- "It's funny, but will it get them off their tractors?"
- When the video game Metal Gear Solid 3 was released to western audiences, it had an unintentionally annoying explanation of the story of The Fall of Man from The Bible, when a character remarked about her name being Eva, and the protagonist being named Snake. Snake radios in to find out what she means.
- This was likely an overreaction to the previous installment in the series, which went completely over the head of the average gamer.
- Also, the story isn't as ingrained into the public consciousness in Japan, so it's at least somewhat justified there. Still could have been cut for the US release.
- Complaints from higher ups that no one would understand the original purpose of The Matrix (a computer that uses the brain and nerve cells of its inhabitants) meant they had to change it to blatantly impossible idea that they are an energy source.
- This also caused changes to Neo's ending speech, as the higher-ups figured not everyone would understand... the word "chrysalis".
- Subverted in the 1939 film adaptation of The Wizard Of Oz when studio brass forced the producers to make Dorothy's adventures in Oz All Just A Dream. Apparently they thought viewers were too sophisticated to accept that a fantasy land like Oz could be real. Go figure.
- Addressed (sort of) in Bones. When called upon at a trial to give her professional expertise, Brennan goes on about the skeletal remains as though she was talking to fellow scientists, using technical jargon and hardly stopping to take a breath. The prosecution was furious with her behaviour, but she refused to talk down to the jury, believing that they could follow her. She later had a talk with her superior on the matter, who rationally explained to her that most of the world is unfamiliar with the very field she is a master of and that presenting things in a simplified manner will allow her expertise to help the case.
- Fairly recently, the traffic tickets in San Diego went up in price. The announcement in a commercial went something like this: "Ticket prices are being raised by 10%. This means that if previously, you would have gotten a ticket for $100 it will now be $110."
- Stargate SG-1 had some fun with this trope, using and subverting it at the same time. Super-scientist Carter would often pause to lecture in technobabble to O'Neill, the leader and least eggheaded member of the team, about fairly basic real-world scientific principles. Not only did this make sure that less-knowledgeable audience members wouldn't be completely lost, it also provided some amusement for sci-fi fans who are already familiar with this stuff, when O'Neill would cut off Carter and have her get to the point. To paraphrase a typical example:
Carter: "First, sir, we dial the stargate out to the world orbiting the black hole, then launch it towards the star from a minimum safe distance. When it comes close enough to the star's surface, it will begin siphoning off matter from the photosphere, imbalancing..."
O'Neill: "Yes, yes, it'll suck away the sun's gas. Which will do what, exactly?"
Carter: "Make the star go boom."
O'Neill: "Cool. That's what I needed to know."
- Another example:
Carter: That might just excite the phase particles enough to bring them into our visible light spectrum.
O'Neill: Carter?
Carter: Sir, the invisibility field must operate—
O'Neill: Are you about to tell me that you can make the invisible guy vi—
Carter: Yes, sir.
O'Neill: That's all I need.
- In one episode where O'Neill and Teal'c are trapped in a Time Loop, O'Neill learns - somewhat - the jargon related to their predicament, allowing him to baffle Carter with his knowledge.
- In an early season episode, O'Neil cleverly subverts his dimwitted persona, then sets up to the plate and hits it out of the park again...
Capt. Carter: You can actually see matter spiralling towards it..
Col. O'Neill: Actually, it's called the Accretion disc.
Dr. Jackson: You can see why the local population would be afraid of i...What did you just say?!
Col. O'Neill: It's just an astronomical term.
Capt. Carter: You didn't think the colonel had a telescope on his roof just to look at the neighbors did you?
Col. O'Neill: [to Teal'c] not initially...
- The underlying rationale for the Law And Order franchise's frequent use of the Idiot Ball / As You Know combo. Although occasionally justified. (This troper learned what Laetrile and Ephebophilia were from L&O)
- The main plot of the movie Men In Black was toned down to something not very logical because the original plot was about two alien species about to enter war, and the bug (a 3rd race) was there to provoke it. The audience will obviously be confused about THREE alien races.
- Spike TV is this trope and Lowest Common Denominator incarnated into a cable television network.
- Subverted in an episode of The Transformers, "Autobot Spike", where Spike comments on Autobot X being a "real metal Frankenstein" and is asked by Bumblebee about what Frankenstein is; Spike then goes on to say it would take too long to explain.
- This is also a good measuring stick upon whether kids are mature enough to deal with some of the nightmare fuel said episode might create. It's a bit of a doozy.
- A good example of this trope causing Executive Meddling can be seen in the climax of Batman Begins. Batman exposits to Gordon that if the train carrying the Mac Guffin reaches Wayne Tower, the whole city will be covered in fear toxin. Executives were convinced that audiences needed to have this information repeated to them every two minutes during the train chase, and so the action climax repeatedly cut away to water technicians repeating this information over and over.
- Parodied in The Tick episode "The Tick vs. Arthur's Bank Account":
(Everyone stares blankly at him.)
Handy: Achilles?... The Iliad?... It's Homer???...
(Close-up on Handy)
Handy: READ A BOOK!
- One more than one occasion on Whose Line Is It Anyway, Wayne Brady would make a joke about something from Shakespeare, be met with silence from the studio audience, and say the same thing: "Read a book, people!"
- Clearly the belief of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer; their movies only contain references to movies made in the past year, presumably in the belief that no one has memories past a year, and wouldn't know the reference of, say, the Smurfs.
- The film 24 Hour Party People begins with Tony Wilson crashing a hang-glider. He turns to the camera and tells us that was symbolic of what will happen to him. "I'll just say one word: 'Icarus'. If you get it, great. If you don't, that's fine too. But you should probably read more."
- A quick, but still annoying moment in Ben 10: Alien Force when Ben, Gwen, and Kevin are battling an alien that absorbs life energy from living things to power itself. When it does so, Gwen exclaims "She's drawing life energy from millions of living things around her!" To which Kevin points out "The grass!" This troper felt the added grass comment was COMPLETELY unnecessary considering it actually SHOWED energy being drawn out from the grass. In fact, the whole series seems to revolve of around the "they are kids so they won't notice" idea mentioned above, because NOTHING in the Alien Force story matches up with the facts that the original series already set out; it
sometimes ALMOST ALWAYS blatantly contradicts them without an ounce of explanation.
- Pointing out the obvious seems entirely in-character for Kevin.
- While Disney is explicitly not allowed to alter the footage or the scripts of the Ghibli films they adapt, two of their earliest dubs contain some changes. In Kikis Delivery Service, there are scenes in which Phil Hartman improvises as Jiji, and most of the silent pieces were replaced by piano music. With Castle In The Sky, the 37-minute score with silences or simple pieces was transformed into a 90-minute long, brand new score (performed by a full symphony orchestra), provided, interestingly, by Joe Hisaishi, composer of the original score, albeit at the insistance of Disney. The primary reasoning behind these changes, according to a Disney executive, were that audiences felt uncomfortable about films with lengthy periods of silence in them. These changes caused controversy with many fans, but it should be noted that Hayao Miyazaki personally approved them; depending on who you ask, these changes can be seen as Woolseyism. Subsequent translations from Disney were simply dubbing the films straight with only slight modifications to explain Japanese culture. And surprisingly, despite their concerns that Americans couldn't grasp films with silence in them, their future Ghibli releases with unaltered scores had no trouble selling.
- While the original 1953 Bond book Casino Royale was called that in Britain, in America the name was changed to You Asked For It, and the back cover refers to him as "Jimmie Bond".
- The Bond movie [[A Licence to Kill]] was originally going to be called "Licence Revoked", but studio execs thought that American cinema-goers wouldn't understand the word "revoked".
- In the first half of the series The Batman the titular character comments every alarm of the Batwave with the words "The Batwave". This Trooper has to ask unbelievingly "The Batwave?" out loud everytime it happens.
- This commercial
 for PC cleanup software Finally Fast, featuring such things as a G4 iBook crashing with a Windows BSOD, seems to embody this trope. (Sure, if you want to use Virtual PC just to check your e-mail...)
- For the viewers who almost never use Macintosh computers, the G4 uses an entirely different processor architecture from any other modern PC. Unless Windows somehow became open-source and somebody re-compiled it for the G4's architecture, there would be no way to run Windows on one. [not directly]
- The Spectacular Spider Man had Green Goblin mention that he had possession of a "portable flash drive". In fact, this seems to be a common habit of any TV character whenever a flash drive is mentioned, even when they should know the person they're talking to has more than a passing familiarity with computers.
Real Life
- Every single U.S. political campaign.
- This.
- Every commercial this troper sees for a Wii game makes him feel like a part of his soul just died. The Little Big Planet commercial doesn't do this to him, yet it obviously looks to be trying to hook more than just the hardcore market on this game. The videos on the Nintendo Channel are in the same boat. (They all are in a monotone voice that definitely was written and spoken so that even the Lowest Common Denominator can understand it.) It really pains this Wii owner.
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