Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

I speculated a while back (it might not even have been in this space, but on someone else's comments) that the rise of annoying reality TV shows might have a side-effect of shaking out the writers on the scripted shows, kind of like the theory that contracting Major League Baseball by a couple of teams would actually benefit the game by shrinking the talent pool and pushing some guys who are in the Majors right now back to the minors, where they really should be. Now I'm wondering if that's not actually happening, because it seems to me that my favorite scripted shows -- ER, 24, The West Wing, even NYPDBlue -- are especially strong right now. Yeah, it's just anecdotal evidence based on my own tastes, but still -- the scripted stuff that I'm watching is really good, and I keep hearing great things about the scripted stuff that I'm not watching.

Which goes to show that writers are the most important souls in the Universe.