Excerpt: Reality shows have not only dumbed down American TV viewers to imbecile level, but they've made the lion's share of television “programming” unwatchable.

Excerpt: Anyway, here's my thought: Bring back movies in prime time. They used to be a staple on network television: “NBC Saturday Night at the Movies,” “The ABC Sunday Night Movie,” “The NBC Monday Movie,” “The CBS Tuesday Night Movies,” “The ABC Wednesday Night Movie,” “The CBS Thursday Night Movies,” “The CBS Friday Night Late Movie.”

Excerpt: Why is the return of the prime-time network movie a good idea? First, it's democratic: Everyone can enjoy a stay-at-home movie night, even those without cable. Second, it's free – unlike HBO, unlike Netflix, unlike Blockbuster. Third, and best of all, it not only beats reality TV, but bad sitcoms and game shows, too.

So not just bringing back movies in prime time, I suggest having the local network affilliate stations return to airing local sports like baseball, football, basketball, soccer, whatever they want, in prime-time, bumping the dog network programming. This will send the networks a message that they should be programming better shows. The affilliates could either bump the network shows into the wee hours or open weekend slots, or refuse the shows and let the network shop it to another station, or even on a local origination cable channel. The local affilliates should be free to air what they want to air. The locals used to air syndicated movie packages in place of some network programming back in the 60s and 70s. They sometimes aired public affairs weekly in prime-time and bumped a show to a 5pm Saturday slot.

Not just that, but back in those days, the networks used to air shows on three networks for 3 and a half hours a day Monday-Saturday, and four on Sundays. That's 75 hours of prime-time shows a week.

Today, we have basically five broadcast networks, not counting the mostly low-rated rerun nets of My Network TV and Ion. NBC will have 17 in the fall, not counting the nightly Jay Leno Show, ABC and CBS each have 22, Fox has 15, the CW has 10 as it loses its Sunday night schedule. Total hours: 86. There are 10 hours when five networks are competeting against each other, and there are 5 when it's just the big four.

I say we need to start combining the CW into NBC so that they could form a really low-rated network. Maybe NBC and ABC could merge into one network, going back to the days when NBC radio used to be two networks, but was forced to spin off one into its own company, the current ABC. Fox could fold My Network TV and take in parts of the CW so Fox could get Gossip Girl, 90210, and Melrose Place. There's just too many networks for too few viewers.

What could save network television is to have Ion fold, My Network TV be shut down, the CW fold into either Fox or CBS, and ABC merge with NBC. Having just three networks once again will result in fewer prime-time shows of low quality, while encouraging the networks to program movies and real shows instead of reality shows once again.