Category talk:Genre

While I do think this category is a good idea I think that the main genres that are more general types of programs should also go in the program category and just subgenres go exclusively here. Specifically these categories: Drama, Comedy, News, Sports, Animated, Documentary, Game Shows and maybe a few others like Music, Talk Show and Variety. Mainly because these describe general types of programs whereas most of the other genre categories further break down these main types. The-jam 10:49, 4 October 2006 (EDT)

I broke out these categories because I got really tired of not being able to see easily which genres we have, and others don't know, either. I discovered the Detective genre with three shows categorized there, but that's a very popular genre. Another problem: Some of these genres may have different names, and it's easy to miscategorize if you don't know and can't easily find what the correct category is. Spy is a TV show, but Espionage is the genre (as Burke's Law (1963) had been miscategorized). With one listing, that problem is more easily avoided.

What you've described aren't "genres," they're formats. A show's format can also be one of its genres, certainly, but "format" is a much broader, less specific concept than genre. Almost any hour-long, scripted episodic is a drama, and comedy is a very broad term with a huge overlap in at least four of the other formats you mentioned.

The second problem is where to subcategorize genres. For a long time, Romance was a subcat of Drama, but probably half the Romance shows on TV are romantic comedies. There are only maybe half a dozen genres of which, by necessity and by definition (Reality under Documentary; Sitcom under Comedy, etc.), it can be said that 100% of all the TV shows and/or movies have fallen into that format. (You keep moving Suspense into the Drama category. First, I want to apologize and promise you I don't keep decategorizing because I disagree; I do it because I keep forgetting you've moved it. However, while it's true Suspense is most likely a Drama, Mel Brooks' movie High Anxiety proves even that can't be taken for granted.)

In breaking out these genres, I avoided having almost anything be solely a subcat of Comedy or Drama—again because those are two very broad terms which describe almost nothing else about a TV show, other than whether it's supposed to be funny or serious. I also moved any genre except those which are, by definition, a subcat of another genre, and a very specific, narrow one at that. In other words, Science Fiction and Animated both have some very, very specific and narrow subgenres, and I left those alone. (Although if someone recategorizes even, say, First Contact or Anime as genres, while I don't necessarily see the need to do that, I won't argue with them.)

If you'd like to also create another category called "Formats" to describe the broad categories you listed above, however, I also could see the usefulness of that, and I wouldn't object. -- JCaesar^talk 19:13, 4 October 2006 (EDT)