I do not think hyperbole is necessary to demonstrate that tv is a VAST wasteland...it is not, however, empty...truth is, if a person took the time to go over the daily listings, you could spend a good chunk of the evening watching (including taped material). Just the other day I saw a good special on the fate of the galaxy...not bad....I saw the testimony before the relevant house committee regarding Enron's brazen manipulation of the California energy markets. Let's not forget the Simpsons....then there are the movies that one can see on the Independent channels, the occasional good movie on the standard movie channels....an occasional opera (if that is your thing)....for some the Sopranos, for some Six Feet Under (me).... Now, I am not saying that it beats reading certain things (for example NOT the WSJ editorial page), but it is not as desolate as people want to make it....if you like travel, cooking, and working with your hands, there also are shows for this. I readily admit that one is not going to see (with any meaningful frequency) debates over the best form of political economy. I also admit that one is likely to see sensationalized versions of the everyday for dramatic effect. Funny, the last thing I would watch tv for is the news, the one thing that used to make the networks so proud...anyway....
Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>
>
> Most of the times, people don't _watch_ TV; they zone out in front of
> their TV's (especially after work). "Watching" takes too much energy.
> --
> Yoshie
>
I don't know whether this is correct or not -- but note. Confirmation of this proposition about the use of a major cultural "media" would (a) be rather more important than any knowledge gained from one hour or 1000 hours of watching some (necessarily)idiosyncratic selection of TV and (b) could not be gained by watching TV but would have to be arrived at by other sources.
No one yet has given any evidence whatever that personally watching TV leads to knowledge of anything.
Carrol
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