However, it looks like PBS never signed up for Nielson until 2009, so we have limited/no public data on viewership of The Joy of Painting (or Sesame Street, etc for that matter).

http://www.thetvratingsguide.com/2020/02/tvrg-ratings-histor...

People that say that sometimes irk me with their pedantry. You don't hear it so much anymore, though, as all the people who once cared are elderly or gone.

Language is mutable. I think the best thing you could do is let it go. Perhaps even ascribe a stronger meaning to this "incorrect" usage: it theoretically could be, but it won't be, because it can't be given the circumstances.

Literally.

Milking every dollar out of anything valuable is burned into people's souls, and willfully decreasing the value is not a possibility.

If you can convince giant bags of money pretending to be people that one of your paintings is worth several years worth of the median wage, it's no more a less a commodity than if you're selling hundreds of thousands of prints of the same image for $5 apiece.

Until it becomes apparent the people he loathes the most are the ones willing to pay him ungodly amounts of money for his "art"; so he relents and sells it to them anyways.

Rolex makes 1,000,000 new watches per year, and the wait lists are years-long.

There is definitely enough demand for all of those paintings to be sold for more than you'd think

I hated this sentence. What is wrong with art that is actually, you know, pretty to look at. Obviously Bob Ross paintings aren't very complicated, as they're designed for amateurs to be able to follow along in the instructions. But I find many of his paintings quite beautiful, and if anything the joy in seeing how simple brush strokes can create such beautiful paintings.

Tracey Emin's "My Bed" "sculpture" sold for two and a half million pounds. So people pretending there is some high objective or moral difference between "high art" and "low/average uninspired stuff" are, frankly, full of themselves IMO.

The Kowalskis sued to exclude Bob Ross from the company bearing his name in the final days of his life, when he was struggling with cancer.

So let me carefully suggest that Bob Ross Inc. is not as benevolently looking out to preserve the heritage and legacy of Bob Ross as you might think.

I think you're oversimplifying how much of a hassle painting can be. Sure, one canvas and one tube of paint cost you $25, but you also need to include brushes (duh), an empty jar for water, a palette or an old plate, an easel or a table where paint spills are not a problem, plus the time to set it all up, clean your brushes afterwards, and tear it down (unless you have an empty garage, which people in apartments typically don't). And then there are the lessons which, if you're a beginner, mean several one-hour chunks (and several canvases) until you feel even mildly comfortable on your own.

I think VR painting is to painting what Guitar Hero is to playing a guitar - you may not be a "real" painter afterwards, but as long as it's fun...

Yeah, you can get by with very simple tools and materials, but a digital version doesn't limit you to only the simple things.

No cleanup.

No need for figuring out what to do with the canvases.

Any color of paint you want, possibly including ones like "polka dots" or "tiled faces of Nic Cage" or "color-cycling rainbow".

And your brush strokes can be 3d contours of virtual paint hanging in the air instead of marks on a flat canvas.