There is a giant reason why television networks are pop culture's dinosaurs, or perhaps I should note that I can give you one huge example of television's failure to grasp pop culture.

CBS has cancelled "Rock Star" after two seasons.

This made the rounds a couple months ago apparently, and I wasn't invited to the board meeting. CBS clearly didn't consult me because I would have told them they have a gold mine on their hands.

No, reincarnating INXS wasn't going to reinvent CBS as a 21st century version of a network, and forming the band formerly called Supernova, chock full of "rockers" formerly known as musicians, wasn't going to turn CBS' modest hit (and, yes, it was a hit -- although, networks gauge summer ratings much differently than they do during other times of year) into an event like FOX has done with Idol.

However, this is where CBS failed the show, and the show failed the network.

I haven't heard execs preach this. I don't read the trades. I'm but a simple-minded country boy with tastes for city living, women, hard drink and loaded guns.

Yet I know that in the 21st Century, in these the oughts, to develop a television show into a hit the size of Idol, one must quit thinking about producing a mere television show.

You must produce an event.

Like the Super Bowl, the Mayweather-De La Hoya fight, the Academy Awards, like election night brought to you by old white men, kind of like The View has done under Rosie the past year. Seriously. People -- opinion makers, the fourth estate, etc. -- tune in to The View right now because they know that what is discussed on THAT show will turn into the afternoon's headlines.

It is required viewing for the TMZ crowd, much like Idol, with no bias on my part at all, is the watercooler show of all time. When a show becomes so big that you begin your morning meeting with a quick rehash of the previous night's events, you know you have an event on your hands.

Rock Star, we hardly knew ye.

Where CBS went wrong was by employing old has-been bands and new has-been "supergroups" as the carrot for contestants. Truly, the show should have been set up just like Idol.

Why mess with success?

Get the winner a contract -- a big one.

Hell, Chris Daughtry didn't go solo. He formed a band, and it is one of the five biggest new bands in the world right now, alongside "Nickelback," who I consider to be new compared, let's say, to U2, "Coldplay," "Fall Out Boy" and, I dunno.

Why CBS couldn't tweak the "Rock Star" formula to allow its contestants to vie for a contract on their own, in front of a panel of three judges (my choices for judges would have been Rob Halford, Courtney Love and Ryan Adams)?

Instead of having them sing cover tunes, why not have them sing their own music exclusively? To think that we as viewers couldn't handle that without becoming tired of the show is to underestimate us considerably. Heck, do we not remember Ryan Star coming literally out of nowhere for about three weeks, performing perfectly and showcasing original music?

The contestants would be responsible for writing music for their weekly performances, or at least performing previously written original music. However, they would be forced into collaborations with other writers, which often happens in the industry -- people writing with others because they have to for a project.

They would all have to play an instrument or at least hold one really cool-like.

And, don't even get me started on the Rock Star house band, which was the best television-show band of all time. Tight. Creative.

The fact that "Rock Star" failed after two years doesn't tell the story of a genre past its prime. It tells the story of a network without the creativity and vision to turn a solid summer television show into an event.

Lazy.