LET'S FORCE SMART TV (Life in General Bitchings for May 4, 1998!)

Yes, it's another media-related bitch - sorry, I watch a lot of TV! Why is the general fare available on TV relatively simple-minded? Why can't we just ban all "stupid" sitcoms and force the TV industry to only make intelligent shows? What could be the worst that would happen? Smart people would have lots of quality free TV to watch and stupid people would stop watching TV and start reading books. Nah, that could never happen.