They knew enough to understand how hard they could push without breakingthings (the rate of return they demanded would soon ossify into a ritualized expectation of stable growth rates, a big enabler of the rise of a middle class that could basically withdraw from the risk frontier).
These types of science shows are arguably more scientific than the shows that you are referring to, and these shows appeal more to men because they are largely about breaking technological things or reassembling them.
In a medium where the notion of community rarely gets explored beyond a hug and a neat wrapup, and in a season when the safe, tame comedy of Jay Leno has wiped five hours of drama clean off the board, the producers of FNL have dug after something deeper: The idea of decay, of thingsbreaking apart and falling away.
