Dancing With The Stars Changes

As more and more entertainment news has been brought to my attention throughout the week, there was one story that caught my interest the most. Having been my favorite reality television show for the past nine years, Dancing With The Stars has decided to make yet another major change. While they're on their eighteenth season, I believe the show has been making way too many changes recently, which is only hurting their ratings. In the past, Dancing With The Stars has made small changes to help boost ratings, such as creating themes for each week and adding new dance categories. They should've stopped there because, in more recent seasons, much larger and unnecessary changes have been made. It started when the show decided to completely change the ballroom, making the scene seem like a completely different show. Another bad decision was made when they began choosing one or two weeks in each season to replace one judge with a celebrity. While this may boost ratings for those weeks, it weakens te credibility of the show because the selected celebrities aren't always professional dancers, forcing them to judge mainly on whether they liked the performances or not. Another major change made to show was to make Dancing With The Stars a Monday night show, when it had been a Monday and Tuesday night show. This was a poor move because it dramatically decreased the ratings, along with the entire Results Show. The show has also replaced hosts, which brings me back to the reason I'm writing this blog. In its upcoming eighteenth season, Dancing With The Stars will be replacing yet another host. I feel like they've made way too many changes, changes that are so major that many original fanatics are losing interest in the show.

Nature-Deficit Disorder

The article I chose was from Chapter 15 in the textbook, and is titled “Out of the Woods: Today’s Kids Can’t See the Forest for the MTV.” In this article, Joel Achenbach addresses the issue of children and teens participating in indoor activities rather than outdoor activities. Joel Achenbach is an experienced writer for for the Washington Post. He bases the article on the subject of the book Last Child in the Woods, which discusses how children stay indoors too much and are alienated from nature, which causes them to go crazy, also referred to as Nature-Deficit Disorder.

Achenbach claims that parents beg their children to go outdoors, but they prefer to stay inside because they don’t know what to do. He repeatedly provides the example of, “The child always asks, ‘And do what?’ And we always say, ‘Climb a tree!’” Going off of this example, he then concludes that children must be under the impression that all their parents did as a kid was climb trees. A majority of the article is based on what Achenbach did when he was stuck indoors as a kid. This element contradicts his original position because as he explains everything he used to do, he complains about how boring it was. As he goes into detail about these activities, he explains how boring each and every one would become, whether it took place indoors or outdoors.

He also contradicts himself by stating, “Face it, we had no choice but to play in the wood, because civilization; hadn’t yet invented Nintendo.” In stating this, he implies that they only went outside because that was that was all there was to do, but with the technology we have no, children have a logical reason to stay indoors, which I completely agree with. Children today prefer to do seek entertainment from the comfort of their own bed or couch because it requires far less effort than actually getting up and going outside.

Achenbach also uses a great deal of humor throughout the article, providing for a more lighthearted feel. He pokes fun at the effort it took to watch a TV show, and even addresses the fact that younger readers would have no idea as to what he was talking about. He continues to use humor when explaining each of the activities he took part in as a child. Although Achenbach’s article is humorous, he contradicts himself many times, providing for a somewhat weak argument.