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LIGHTS-OUT ON THE TUBE
From post by nimda/‘In the Public Interest’ on Nader dot org
Excerpted, edited by Carolyn Bennett
“Television today—over the air and cable—with the usual exceptions, could empty the dictionary of disparaging adjectives.…”
Television is “… second-rate movie reruns, insipid sitcoms dependent on canned laughter, dramas so spilt-second violent they eliminate any kind of memorable suspense.… Some time slots—such as daily afternoon talk-entertainment shows—are so bad, so sadomasochistic and exploitive, they escape media critics.…
“…On weekends, the shows swing from slick infomercials pushing cutlery and real estate wealth, to sports that become duller play by play—especially golf—to Sunday morning news programs where evasions of predictable questions run on and on.
“…Early and late local evening news needs psychoanalysts. … Thirty minutes of late local news is composed of roughly¯
The abbreviated rest called news. …
“…Gone are the regulatory expressions of the 1934 statutory standard —‘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 Federal Communications Commission.
“Gone is the fairness doctrine or right of reply.” FCC station license renewal proceedings are infrequent compared with thirty years ago.…
Newton Minow, FCC chairman under President John F. Kennedy, “shocked a broadcast industry audience [in 1961 (!)] when he called television a ‘vast wasteland.’”
Had he not mellowed into a lucrative corporate law practice, “what would Newton Minow [have said] today? What is the superlative of ‘vast wasteland’?”
Having to plough through the noise hoping to find snippets of interest in otherwise flat and formulaic television programs; having to endure densely-packed relentless advertisements and product placements; not knowing if a news segment is canned from an industry consultant¯invites an extended vacation from the already-limited resort television.
Indeed.
I took that vacation several years ago and never looked back¯Never regretted curtains, lights-out on the tube.
“Is TV Worth the Transition?” Posted by nimda in ‘In the Public Interest,’ Friday, June 12, 2009,
http://www.nader.org/index.php?/archives/2125-Is-TV-Worth-the-Transition.html
http://www.nader. org/index.php?/authors/2-nimda
Labels: FCC, U.S. broadcast programs, U.S. television
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