Daniel D’Addario feels that Meghan McCain’s new TV show represents “the worst of millennial culture”:
[U]ntil I saw “Raising McCain,” I had thought millennials got a bad rap.
The series, which [debuted] on the new network Pivot TV [on] Saturday, is a combination talk show and unscripted series — half “The View,” half “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.” It follows the exploits of one Meghan McCain, the daughter of the current U.S. senator from Arizona and one-time presidential nominee John McCain; she alternates between interviewing her guest and showing a slice of what it is like to be the daughter of a U.S. senator who lost the presidency in a landslide. She has been given 30 minutes a week on an aspirant cable network to prove that she has nothing to say.
Meghan McCain is the epitome of what it is to be not a millennial — a group of individuals of multifarious racial and class backgrounds — but the media perception of a millennial. The media wished that millennials, as a group, could be self-absorbed, entitled and unimaginative; Meghan McCain rose to the challenge.
But Emily Nussbaum thinks the millennial-targeted Pivot network, sans McCain, shows potential:
Pivot is barely a network yet—it’s more of a soft launch—but, at its best, it feels like a thoughtful attempt to reach young viewers without relying on pre-chewed assumptions about who they are. Traditionally, cable networks don’t find their identities until they create a hit: “The Sopranos” for HBO, “Buffy” for the WB, “Mad Men” for AMC. Yet there’s something to be said for watching an institution before it becomes a stable brand, when there’s still oddness and experimentation, and room for interesting mistakes. MTV was like that at first: although the v.j.s barely knew how to handle their microphones, if you were the right age you couldn’t stop watching. Pivot isn’t anywhere near that exciting yet, but it’s been around only a month. Give the kid a chance.
The Dish 