Nothing on TV

I think I'm spoiled. It used to be back when there were only 4 channels available to me that I could always find something interesting on television to watch. Now that there's hundreds of channels, I swear that every one of them carry dull programs, and I can't seem to find anything interesting at all. Even the movies that HBO and Showtime play seem to suck.

Is the real reason because of a lack of competition for programming to get airtime? I mean, in the past, someone had to have a quality show in order to get fit into the on-air programming schedule of a network. Now, all it seems that all they need to do is take their show to the specialized niche channel for that show's topic (i.e., cooking show would go to Food Network, home improvement show would go to HGTV or TLC, etc).

So the natural selection process that used to allow the strongest program to survive has fallen to the wayside. Now every gimp of a program has a chance, and most of the seem to air at the same time across all of the networks. The result: I channel surf for the entire 30-minute block of time that they all air, and conclude that "nothing's on".

Or, do I perceive this to be the case because I know that I have hundreds of options out there other than what's on the current channel.

Either way, it's exactly why I need a PVR for timeshifting. I can then collect the programming that I want to watch (those few gems in the sea of boring programming) and watch them when I have time. It's letting TV come to me instead of the other way around.