TV or Not TV

Today's telling statistic: In the United States, 94% of households have at least one television.
91% have a bathtub. That suggests that three percent of American families need to seriously re-evaluate their priorities.
In this Internet age, it may seem quaint--archaic, even--to rail against television. After all, in the last ten years, TV watching has declined somewhat dramatically. Sadly, children in particular have simply replaced one screen with several. The sedentary life that today's children and teens overwhelmingly prefer will cost them dearly. Studies have suggested that life expectancies will be seen to decline for the first time in recorded history, thanks in part to diet, perhaps in larger part to...screens.
Television started it all.
If you survey science fiction from the years 1880-1930, you'll find literally dozens of authors who predicted some sort of television device. But nobody, to my knowledge, predicted that a mere half-century after its popularization, society would (a) depend on it and its descendants for the vast majority of our information or (b) devote a huge part of our waiting life to its inhuman glow.
(Science fiction's infamous for this sort of thing. Many predicted a successful moon shot; nobody even dared to consider that after reaching the moon and reaping all the rewards the space race brought us, we'd abruptly losse interest. Cars were widely imagined, but few dreamed of suburbanization. Some people conjured up something resembling a personal computer, but spam email snuck in under the radar.)
Technology has clearly run well ahead of common sense.
And television started it all.
Consider: most people of my generation started their TV viewing with Sesame Street. This programme, one of the most watched (and studied) in the world, purports to educate kids in an entertaining fashion; what it really does is grant them a three-minute (at best) attention span. Sure, kids learn the alphabet, but once that alphabet is transferred to a boring old black-on-white page, with nary an animation, how many kids care to learn further?
There was such a thing as "attention deficit disorder" before Sesame Street (although a way back in 1902 they called it "Morbid Defect of Moral Control"--yike!) But it can hardly be a coincidence that the rampant spike indiagnosis of ADD came after Sesame Street and a myriad of copycats infested our televisions.
Perhaps television for adults is of a better quality.
Yeah, right.
Sure, there are good shows on television...lots of them. But most of them reside nowhere near NBC, CBS, ABC or FOX. They're up on the Discovery Channel, History Television, or A&E, where ratings aren't the be-all and end-all.
(Yes, there are many smart dramas and even a few intelligent comedies left on the networks. But it seems like every year, a few of them die off and get replaced by the demon weed called 'reality' television--which is anything but.
A couple of years back, CBC ran a series about a suburbanite family 'transported' back to the 1800s. It was called Pioneer Quest, and hardly anybody watched it. Why? Lots of reasons. No "immunity challenges", no nudity, and no cutthroat, campy competition. In short, it was too much reality for reality TV addicts.
But, you know, the world of reality television keeps evolving, in lockstep with the Webcam universe. It's just a matter of time before we see The Running Man on Thursday nights--not the movie starring Schwartzenegger but its titular game show. And maybe some others that Stephen King dreamed up some thirty years ago: Treadmill to Bucks, wherein heart patients are forced to run on treadmills, with an audience looking on and feverishly placing bets on who will last the longest. Or Swim the Crocodiles...self-explanatory. At that point I'll stop bitching about the fakery on Survivor and start seriously considering emigrating off-planet. Fear Factor is bad enough, thank you...but people watch it.
TV has dumbed down politics. Honestly, do you think Lincoln or Churchill would last long in this age of ten second sound bites?
If, God forbid, Paul Martin is re-elected, we'll have television to thank. First of all, there was his oh-so-sincere-looking television address, when he hijacked the nation's airwaves to give him a chance to stand in front of Canadians and look prime ministerial. Then there's the Gomery inquiry. It's televised in Quebec, and it's quite a hit; it's certainly convinced a goodly number of Quebecois not to vote Liberal. Ah, but try to view the inquiry in English Canada. Kind of hard to find, isn't it?
Do we really need all of the following: CTV Newsnet, CBC Newsworld, CNN, CNN Headline News, FOX News, and CP24? There's only so much news at any given time; before long, they have to resort to whatever Paris Hilton is up to lately. Six 24-hour news channels strikes me as overkill, especially when every local channel already devotes at least four hours a day to news.
Consider all the things television has begat...
LAUGH TRACKS. I used to wonder, as a kid, if my sense of humour was deficient. Listening to the sounds of hundreds of people laughing five times a minute will do that. Now, I just find them annoying as hell.
REMOTE CONTROLS. These were first marketed under the name "Lazy Bones". Did you know that there are now televisions that will not work without a remote?
PRODUCT PLACEMENT. Sure, Hollywood has done this too, but television has raised it to absurd heights...to the point where plots are specifically laid out to show off various products.
INFOMERCIALS. "But wait, there's more!" Several times I have found myself interested in a product showcased on one of these smarmfests. But then I stop to think to myself, "if this product is so good, how come no reputable store carries it?" Eventually, of course, some of them do make the leap--at which point I might buy one.
MUSIC VIDEOS. Forgive me for this--it's out-and-out blasphemous, I know--but I'd like to go back in time and shoot the guy who first shot one of these. Because of music videos, the first question producers ask has nothing to do with the merit of the record. Instead they wonder how to get a bunch of bare-assed sluts to dance to it.
I'll end my rant here...Living With Fran's on.