My parents (Generation Baby-Boomer) have always complained about how education was better in the good old days, how today's standards have slipped and children are not being taught the necessary cognitive and reasoning skills to be able to live productively in the world. Their famous example is Jay Leno's skit,
Jay Walking, where he interviews 'random' passerbys on the street, asking them seemingly simple questions. The eclectic and oft-idiotic responses he receives demonstrate an American educational system that quite farcically fails.
Apparently, the cultural tides have shifted and there is a growing demand for more cognitive engagement across mediums. The article linked above points to several indicators of this transition, utilizing examples of complicated narrative structures in recent television programming, like *Lost*, that "are less formulaic and pre-digested than their predecessors."
This should be received well; we should embrace such engagement. Yet I wouldn't write this off as simple popular cultural pressure to become more cognitive. Cognition has a much larger connotation in practice and I would argue that the apparent 'intellectualization' of television narrative is, in part, a response to a need to continually surprise and entertain, to consistently provide incremental sensory novelties to the consumer. Where we once would gladly watch an episode of Seinfeld, week after week, with the same jokes, now we want something different, something more.
What is new and surprising to the senses does not necessarily equate to an intellectual stimulant. One aspect of the media is to provide sensory caffeine when we become accustomed and dulled to the same tricks and strategies. Passing off novelty as intellectuality only ofuscates the process. Claiming that popular culture demands consumables that require more thought sounds slightly fishy to me.
'Intellectual consumption' is not intellectual retention and development. However, the mere fact that the media is discussing this topic makes it something that becomes more popular and then, snow-balling takes hold. The more we speak of it; the stronger positive effect it has in the public consciousness. And that's a good thing.