Television is a medium because anything well done is rare. — Fred Allen

Television is a medium because anything well done is rare.

Author: Fred Allen

Insight: There's a dark humor in Fred Allen's jab at television, but it cuts deeper than just complaining about bad shows. He's pointing at something we still grapple with: the sheer volume of content we produce makes excellence statistically unlikely. When you're churning out hours of programming daily, quality becomes the exception, not the rule. The same logic applies to social media posts, podcasts, articles, or any medium where quantity dominates—more output almost always means more mediocrity. What's worth sitting with is how this flips our expectations. We treat "medium" as neutral, even prestigious. But Allen suggests it's actually a symptom of lowered standards. A medium isn't just a channel; it's what happens when good work gets buried under an avalanche of acceptable filler. We've normalized this trade-off without really noticing it. The real sting is personal. We're all producers now—posting, creating, sharing constantly. The question isn't whether we're on television anymore; it's whether anything we make rises above the noise. Allen's comment reminds us that the pressure to produce endlessly works against the patience and care that actually makes something worth paying attention to. Rarity isn't a bug; it might be the whole point.