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A & E, the Arts and Entertainment Network has undergone remodeling in the last few years. A & E used to be a network which lived up to its moniker. It aired entertaining programming that exhibited the arts. Classic and award-winning films and television series, documentaries on artists and culture, theatre, and the like was the general fare. It was a network that you could rely upon for providing quality and art-centric entertainment.

However, lately A & E has succumbed to the horrors of reality TV drivel, emotion-pandering, and paparazzi-esque television. Now A & E is exhibiting: Gene Simmons Family Jewels, Parking Wars, and Paranormal State. These shows are weak even in the low-bar realm of reality-television. Gene Simmons' Family Jewels chronicles the life of Gene Simmons (lead singer of the band KISS) and his embarrassed family. When are celebrities going to learn that having a television crew follow your family around is a sure way to destroy what few meaningful relationships exist between them? This show has been on for several seasons now, and every year it is renewed I am surprised. Who is watching this contrived "reality?" A & E's latest show that they are widely promoting is Parking Wars. Though it is hard to believe, this show is actually about meter-attendants. I think that actually being a meter-maid would be pretty boring, but not as boring as watching a show about meter-maids. I would love to know who green-lit this ho-hum. One of the newest shows to come from A & E is Paranormal State. This is a rip-off of the Sci-Fi Network's hit show Ghost Hunters, minus the skepticism and protocol. This show follows a bunch of college kids who search for evidence of the paranormal while giving each other the heebie-jeebies with their tales of "personal encounters." These are the shows A & E most heavily promotes, its cream of the crop. I ask you, where is the art? Where is the entertainment?

I miss the old standards of the Arts and Entertainment network. From what I can tell, A & E no longer airs programming pertaining to the arts or entertainment. If you are not interested in watching re-runs of CSI- Miami, Chris Angel Mind Freak, The First 48, Parking Wars, or Intervention, then A & E is not the network for you because these are the shows that comprise their entire evening lineup during the week. I am disappointed in A & E. They had a fun and entertaining television model and they have abandoned it to run the reality-TV rat race. What's worse, they abandoned their unique persona to run a race that they are losing miserably.

Learn more about this author, Erin K. Wiedemer.
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