New York City is full of them. Hopelessness can lead to undesirable actions. The survival instinct kicks in. A t a certain level, I can agree with James Poniewozik's worries about the economic Balkanization of popular culture. On the other hand, it strikes me that he misses one of the essential elements in the universe of premium cable channels.
Television is paid for by someone.
Networks are paid by advertisers to deliver an audience. I'm not naive enough to suggest that cable doesn't have its own forms of standards and practices, but they do seem less timid. And if the networks aren't paying for it, somebody else must. His rhetorical question whether editorial content could be affected by the media's need to heed consumers with money obliquely calls attention to another conundrum. Sometimes, in these days of corporate synergy, the most interesting questions, especially regarding editorial content, are answered just by following the money.