"What TV is extremely good at - and realize that this is "all it does" - is discerning what large numbers of people think they want, and supplying it"

David Foster Wallace draws attention to television’s unique power: its relentless focus on catering to audience desires. Rather than being a source of wisdom, challenge, or even independent creativity, television functions as a vast feedback loop between the preferences of the masses and the content delivered onscreen. Its success stems not from leading culture, but from following it, vigilant and agile in responding to viewers’ collective appetites.

Television networks and producers pore over ratings, demographic data, and audience reactions with scientific precision, trying to stay attuned to even the subtlest shifts in popular taste. By design, TV is less interested in confronting viewers with uncomfortable truths or unfamiliar perspectives and more invested in affirming what a broad audience already finds palatable or entertaining. In Wallace’s words, this is “all it does”, it is suppleness without resistance, an industry engineered to mirror and reinforce existing desires.

The phrase “what large numbers of people think they want” signals a subtle distinction between genuine need or authentic self-interest and the perceptions shaped by habit, advertising, and social influence. Television reflects not true desires necessarily, but the prevailing sense of what is enjoyable or acceptable, even if this is constructed or conditioned. There is an implicit irony here: by endlessly refining its reflection of popular preference, TV may help solidify or even invent those very preferences.

Supplying what is already sought after ensures a kind of cultural stability, but it can also limit the possibility of surprise, disruption, or growth. Art forms historically have challenged audiences as much as they have pleased them; TV, in Wallace’s view, mainly pleases. This passivity may create a cycle in which both television content and public discourse grow increasingly shallow, since whatever is new or difficult is filtered out, leaving only the familiar and easily digestible.