[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Is TV Worth the Transition?

[Bill Totten]

by Ralph Nader

www.nader.org (June 12 2009)


At twelve noon on June 12 2009, the end of analog television's era was
also when I let my set go dark. The last declaration I saw was that there
were about three million of us disconnected but, no worry, we can still
order the "converter box" to bring all those programs back to our living
rooms.

Going dark on tv was not that hard - at least for a while. My recent
memories had too many "yuks" and too few "harks".

President John F Kennedy's chairman of the Federal Communications
Commission, Newton Minow, shocked a broadcast industry audience when he
called television a "vast wasteland". That was in 1961!

Had he not mellowed as a corporate lawyer with a lucrative practice, what
would Newton Minow say today? What is the superlative of "vast wasteland"?

Television today - over the air and cable - with the usual exceptions,
could empty the dictionary of disparaging adjectives. Some times slots -
such as daily afternoon talk-entertainment shows - are so bad, so
sadomasochistic and exploitive, that they escape the media critics. Why
would Tom Shales - the insightful Washington Post critic who writes like a
dream - want to apply his talented eye to shows that invoke the Latin
phrase "res ipsa louitur": the thing speaks for itself?

On weekends, the shows swing from the slick infomercials, pushing cutlery
and real estate wealth, to sports that become duller play by play -
especially golf - to the Sunday morning news program where evasions of
predictable questions run on and on.

Then there are the second-rate movie reruns, the insipid sitcom shows, so
dependent on canned laughter, the dramas, so split-second violent that
they eliminate any kind of memorable suspense.

The early and late local evening news needs psychoanalysts. Repetition may
be economical for it requires fewer reporters.

The thirty minutes of the late local news is composed of roughly nine
minutes of ads, four minutes of sports, four obsessive minutes of four
weather segments, the usual openings with street crimes or fires, the
customary animal story and half minute of contrived, spontaneous chit-chat
between the anchors and the rest - the abbreviated rest - is what can be
called news.

One local DC station once had the temerity to try vainly distinguishing
itself from the sameness of its competitors by the slogan "no chit chat,
no fluff".

So little time is left for news that most news is not covered - not in the
neighborhoods, not in city hall or the courts, not in business, labor,
schools, or civic activity or achievement.

Missing so much reality by allocating lots of time for local news and
wasting so much of it takes the label of those "Reality Shows" to the
level of ironic satire.

How much reality would there be without C-Span - that lonely tribute to
the public intellect and engagement? Over ninety percent of television is
entertainment or advertisements - mostly low grade even for those willing
to inhabit bad taste.

I just saw an auto ad on the news for Kia with hamsters driving and
occupying the front seat.

The public air waves belong to the people. They are the owners and the
television stations are the tenants. Guess what? Since the beginning of
television broadcasting, these lucrative stations have paid no rent. It is
a rent free way to mint money under the guidance of a supine Federal
Communications Commission and a Congress frightened of the power of the
broadcast industry.

Gone are the regulatory expressions of the 1934 statutory standard -
namely "the public interest, convenience and necessity" - binding
television stations to a level of public responsibility.

Gone is the worthy requirement for each station to ascertain the public's
information needs in an annual public report to the FCC. There is no more
fairness doctrine or right of reply. FCC station license renewals
proceedings are not as frequent as they were thirty years ago.

Some valuable shows manage to get through the "vast wasteland" and make
money. Among them are 60 Minutes (CBS) and the Simpsons (FOX). Non-profit
public television has the Bill Moyers Journal. The nature and history
shows on some cable channels bear occasional attention.

By and large, however, getting through the noise, hoping to find snippets
of interest in otherwise flat and formulaic programs, and having to endure
the densely-packed relentless advertisements and product placements, and
not knowing whether a news segment is canned from an industry consultant,
invites a vacation from an already limited resort to my TV.

There are so many other things to do and learn and evoke than watching
screens.

http://www.nader.org/index.php?/archives/2125-Is-TV-Worth-the-Transition.html


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