Coming up: an all-new episode of Program

Is it just me, or have TV show titles become increasingly simplistic over the past several years? TV titles used to be more than uncreative explanations of the show premise. I suppose the trend started with ER, a title which was concise, yet punchy and memorable. However, in an apparent effort to market their programs to viewers with extremely short attention-spans and shallow memories, the networks just got lazy.

There were shows that simply, explicitly explained thier concepts: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Prison Break and Cold Case. Next, we were given shows that were simply named after their locations: The O.C., Hawaii and Las Vegas. Now, we currently have a spate of one-word titles that are simply nondescript nouns: Lost, Bones, House, Vanished, Numbers, Heroes, Medium, Justice, Girlfriends, Kidnapped, Scrubs, Shark, and Standoff.

Don't be shocked if the networks start shaving off 'the' prefixes as well. We could soon have to add Office, Unit, Class, Loop and Nine to the list.