An Open Letter to Television Networks:

by Crazy Ivan

Dear Television,

I was flipping through your myriad offerings last night and it occurred to me (as it has many times before) that pretty much everything on sucks.  I went from a cake-baking show to some burly guys with beards doing something occupationally hazardous to some nincompoop ghostbuster-wannabes to another cake-baking show to a carbon-copy sit-com to a lopsided political show to another cake-baking show.

And then I turned the TV off and silently thanked the producers for inspiring me to get up and practice slack-lining for a while.

But as I was crossing back and forth and stumbling backwards on this thing, I reflected on how bad TV has gotten over the years.  As ever more networks seek to fill ever more time, they inevitably started running out of stuff to show.  At some point, they started just pointing cameras at random stuff and sticking commercial breaks in it and the cake-baking show was born.

Now I'm not trying to trash cake-baking shows.  My wife loves them and she can't be the only one or there wouldn't be 26 of them on television right now (I'm counting cupcake shows in that total as well), but some of the shows just smack of desperation.  I flipped passed a show the other day that was just following the antics of a hair salon.  A hair salon!  Audiences are essentially invited to sit there and watch other people work.  And part of that work is washing and drying hair.  Just think of the suspense!

It would be easy to fault the producers or call the writers lazy, but there are hundreds of networks and every one of them is trying to put together 24 hours worth of programming every day.  It's only a matter of time before there's a television show for every major occupation in the country.  I'm already imagining the promo ads for the next season of "Patent Application Research Assistants: Las Vegas".

But far be it from me to just sit here and complain.  I'm not about finding problems, I'm all about finding solutions.  So to all of the television producers out there, I'd like to make you aware of the following:

• There is a house in picturesque Forest Hills, NY that houses a pro-juggler (me), a pro flair bartender (Monk), a pro-footbagger (Mav), a former college athlete (Kid), an adorable chick with mad skills (Pinky), and a dude named Animal (Animal).
• If that isn't enough to entice you, we also have a very talented beat-boxer and break dancer moving in shortly.
• When we're not at our job playing with toys in two of the coolest stores on earth, we can be found walking on slack-lines, riding unicycles, longboarding at high speeds through Manhattan, swinging fire and/or sword fighting.
• When we're not doing any of the above it's because we're travelling somewhere photogenic (like Australia, for example).
• We are also living the American dream and work every day toward building an empire out of nothing but a crazy idea and a refusal to give up.
• As if that's not enough entertainment waiting to happen, Pinky also occassionally bakes cakes and we know how you TV producers love cake-baking.

Hopefully a television producer or two will happen upon this article and give us a call (office number is 516-801-4949 guys and gals) or shoot us an e-mail (at crazyivan@myachi.com) and maybe next year, instead of another season of the insurance-office themed reality show "Underwriter", you'll see my smiling visage (or better yet, one of the better looking guys).

Sincerely

Crazy "Aaron Davies" Ivan

PS If the producers are reading yet, I'd also love it if you could bring back "Battle Bots"

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Just to be on the safe side, I suggest you pass this article on through every social network you frequent.  Link it on FB, tweet it, e-mail it, print it out and hand it out in flier form... whatever you have to do.  It's not too late to save television.