Why Long Tail content is different cites an insightful take on TV’s catering to the Lowest Common Denominator from A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again:
TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.