Don't you hate being referred to as ''the people'' — as if you were a big mass of grazing cows being herded from one multiplex pasture to the next every week? You don't hear it in TV anymore, because networks know that we've become a niche nation, and we're going to stay that way. We don't all like the same shows; we don't all want to like the same shows. When the most popular (and most people-powered) TV series is American Idol, and three-quarters of households are happily watching something else every time it's on, talk of ''the people'' as a unified entity becomes pointless. (It's even pointless on Idol itself: Remember when ''the people'' decided that they liked Taylor Hicks better than Chris Daughtry, and then months later, when their CDs came out, decided they were only kidding?)
