Take back America from TV

[Thom Little]

That comatose figure before the television is me. And the images flickering in her face are not of the Berlin Philharmonic playing Bartok or documentaries on China. They are The Planet's Funniest Animals or reruns of The Munsters.

I watch television, and I use it as a drug. Let no one call me a television snob. But let me also draw a line in the sandbox: Free humans should never have television forced on them. This is happening more and more, and it gives me the creeps. I know others who feel likewise.

There's no escaping TV. It's in the doctor's office, the gym and the jury-pool waiting room. It's in the bar, whether there's a game on or not. It's at the airport, where CNN holds everyone hostage. Note how the monitors are carefully placed around the boarding areas so that no seat is beyond their grasp.

Hospital waiting rooms are perpetually under television domination. The detainees may want to read, pray or listen to their own thoughts. They are not allowed to. Television must be watched.



http://www.projo.com/opinion/columnists/content/projo_20060101_01harr.2e9b69e.html

[ixion]

1. I got rid of cable a few years back

and have never missed it. I still watch movies on DVD, but I don't have the cacophony of broadcast news and commercials.

It's much quieter now. :-)

[PATRICK]

2. One issue

Hundreds of cable channels and not one major news outlet that does the job of a free, professional press.
How did that happen? Many will tell you that among all the channels dedicated to minutiae of human existence, including history, not one is worth a tinker's dam and even the science and history is dubiously watered down- for one reason.

No one cares and there is no money in its for plain old news. As a result the profession in actuality has left that whole mine untouched and off limits, like some mine of lead not gold. The fools' gold of infotainment and propaganda for power carpet bombs the airways with crap.

One can blame the audience for sure, but that does not explain why among all the networks the only alternative news commonly available is from the BBC and the Comedy Channel. It HAS reached a state where actual news, unbullied, unvarnished, non-commercial, professional and probative is there for the picking- as has been proved easily by the Internet "amateurs". The impact is arguably a reopening- and monopoly of the gold mine especially in a time or information repressed crises. Just getting away from the blowhards and the craven boot-licking and comic book journalism of the present charade would by comparison create a shock wave on which any decent attempt at real journalism could ride to success.

So it is not about the people's desire for bread circuses and comforting, but about money and power for the owners of the new topdown society. Which is why competing is not as easy as it would obviously be for someone trying to "break into" the hundreds of pitiful channels of available TV, as it is on the open range of the Internet.