Television

I just finished reading a 1994 Washington Post feature entitled "Group Portrait With Television", an anthropological review of a suburban family and their television habits. It's odd to remember that television, a dull stream of American consciousness compared to the netherworld of the Internet, was once the target of PSA meetings and parental organizations. The manner in which the article neatly details the exact schedules of the family's viewing habits, down to the size of the consoles (19 inches?! Slow down, America) and the rooms in which they watch, seems to be doing so for shock value. How could a family be okay with watching Maury Povitch every day? The father of the Delmars, the family which serves as the subject of the portrait, has an interesting take on it:

"I just don't buy it that too much TV is bad for you," says Steve, 37, the chief financial officer of a company that makes automated telephone answering systems, who gets home from work around 7, eats dinner while watching Dan Rather and Connie Chung, settles down in the den by the 19-inch Sony, watches a few hours of sports, goes back to the bedroom, turns on the Hitachi and falls asleep with it on because Bonnie can't fall asleep if it's off. "Nobody wants to admit they watch television -- it's got the connotation: 'the boob tube' -- but all these people, what are they doing? I'm not sure if they have any more intellect. It's not like they're all going to the Smithsonian or anything."

America before OJ. America before Monica. America before Osama.

Indeed, television was subject to more scrutiny by parental and medical organizations than any media source before it. As the Nielsen rating system revealed Americans to watch 7.5 hours of TV a week (the number is closer to 6.5 currently) and specialized channels (CNN, ESPN, Nickelodeon, The History Channel, The Food Network) began to dominate more bandwidth, television was king of the 1990's. Bill Clinton, in his 1992 campaign, made a point of supporting V-chips, a now archaic technology which attempted to allow parents to block certain kinds of programming. Parents in the article are horrified when a child health specialist holds a seminar at the local elementary school to espouse the dangers of too much television:

She turns on the TV and shows a videotape, in which the announcer says that "in a typical television season, the average adolescent views 14,000 instances of sexual contact or sexual innuendo in TV ads and programs."

She turns on an opaque projector and shows a chart that says: "Most children will see 8,000 murders and 10,000 acts of violence before they finish elementary school."

"They won't do any other thing, other than eat or sleep, that many times," she says. "That's what we're teaching them. It's okay to kill 8,000 people. It's okay to hurt or maim 10,000 people. It's okay. TV does it, so it's okay."

While true that we have the vantage of hindsight, these assumptions about TV were misguided even then. In a post-Columbine world, we now know that media does not turn otherwise healthy children into killers, be it music, TV, or video games. But it was wrong to assume it was harmful to begin with. Charles Manson was inspired by The White Album, which isn't even the most violent Beatles album. Killers are inspired by their own psychosis, not what they saw on the evening news growing up. Plus, children are surprisingly capable of separating reality and fiction, as well as separating good and bad within fictional narratives. Not to mention the facts and figures given here are pathetically inconsequential when compared to the trove of data the Internet provides to children. The fact that somewhere in the world a child's first cultural memory is watching the bloodied body of Muammar Ghaddafi be paraded around on the hood of a truck on Youtube is not, admittedly, comforting. But the medium is certainly not to blame. You might as well blame weather patterns for thunder scaring your children.

In the interest of full disclosure, my childhood was painted with the cold glow of a 13-inch Sanyo which followed me from house to house. My mother was skeptical of television, barring me from watching The Simpsons and, later on, South Park, but she never shirked from letting it hold my attention through one of her late-night shifts as an ER nurse and, later on, her bed-ridden depressive spells. One of my great childhood memories is of sneaking out of bed when my dad would come home late at night, watching Conan O'Brien ward off lizards a guest animal trainer had brought on or flirt with Heather Locklear. Later, my sister became an MTV obsessive, watching TRL during its Carson Daly heyday. As we entered adolescence, she and I became obsessive fans of Friends (though things got a bit silly after Chandler and Monica married) and Mad About You (no comment). As she entered high school and adapted to something called a "social life", I attached myself to Batllebots, literally the perfect show for twelve-year-old boys. Battlebots, some may recall, came on just before South Park. As my mother's mental issues became more severe, her attention to my television habits became more distant, so I was able to sneak in a few episodes after my nightly robot-fightin' time. This grew into watching what South Park led into, The Daily Show, which has been my favorite cable show ever since (in the words of David Rakoff, "I would drink Jon Stewart's bath water").

So where's television now? I am certainly not the only young person eschewing a cable box for a high-speed modem. Television still exists in the form of streaming services, such as Netflix, Hulu, and less-than-legal options, but sitting down in front of the television for hours at a time is an old habit that died hard. Indeed, those who still do watch television usually do so with laptop or some other device wiring them to the Internet; the television is background noise while the Internt requires your attention.

The Internet used to be plagued by PTA horror stories of online predators, hackers out to steal your identity, and more recently, cyberbullying. Compared to television, though, the Internet has largely outlived these negative connotations. The viewing habits of the Delmar family are quaint compared to an era of dinner table Youtube sessions. So why is it the Internet more solidly secured itself as a safe, recreational source?

Perhaps it's the practical use of the internet. It's less comparable to a TV than it is to a phone, putting us in instant contact with friends, family, and colleagues. We can now pay bills, get an insurance quote, research local mechanics, and wish Grandma a happy 80th birthday all from the same browser window. Whereas TV is such a passive activity, the Internet is also a tool. The more legitimate uses have begun to outweigh the frivolous.

With each new technology comes fears of its overuse. This is merely a naturaly reaction by a society to major change of any kind. But when new technologies prove themselves more than something to stare at, these fears are washed away in the face of ease and convenience.

Is TV doomed? I'm not one for predictions. If sports and news fully engender the Internet on to television's last stronghold, live programming, then what purpose will television serve? TiVos trap you to the couch and game consoles could turn television sets into computer monitors. Much like newspapers, if television wants to survive, they'll need to work at providing their products online in a comfortable, easy manner. Hulu certainly has mastered this game, obtaining streaming rights to hit shows from three of the four major networks. Hulu's ad system is flawless, even allowing you to switch from a commercial irrelevant to your lifestyle to one more fitting. Even their premium service, Hulu+, almost seems worth it (almost). Hulu is perhaps the best example of an industry responding to technological change (other than the music labels success at converting their industry from CD singles to Now That's What I Call Music). Mergers of television and the Internet which have come from the opposite direction have had mixed results; Google TV is largely a flop while Apple TV may be due for a post-Jobs reboot.

Nearly thirty years after the debut of MTV and the world still stands. The parental hysteria of the 90's, laughed away by Nielsen families like the Delmars, was mostly a first-world problem of a country at its most first-worldly. While the Internet does pose some actual dangers to children and parents alike, one can take solace in the story of television's rise from an appliance to a dangerous mind-melting devil then back to an appliance.