TV vs. Reading et al

[Sojourner]

At 10:15 AM 8/18/97 BST, andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk wrote:

>To return to the subject of TV and reading I will note that the force
>behind TV which makes it so vicious is money. Cinema still has a large
>slice of its output which is not heavily controlled by moneyed
>interests. Books ditto. But TV is almost exclusively dominated by the
>interests of advertisers and ahs been since its very early days. Even
>here in the UK where we have had high quality public TV in the past
>the squeeze is on public TV to gain audience figures and the product
>is responding accordingly - lots of pap, which is guaranteed to catch
>an audience by pandering to ignorance and sloth, interspersed with
>high-budget `culture', some of it fake, some of it fer real, almost
>all of it serving to keep the flag flying and provide an excuse for
>the pretentious as to why they watch TV. As ever, look to the money
>and power.
>

Uh oh... ok here I go, here I go, here I go now to defend TV:

What's wrong with money?  Or people with money producing art?
Money is not immoral, people with money are not automatically 
immoral, and art has been produced by "moneyed interests" since
time began, including Mozart and Michelangelo to name two purists
who were truly touched by an inner talent from their Maker.


***
My personal aside to Marx bros fans:  Alright!! Almost concurrently
with your strong recommendations and praise for their work, I get
a slew of Marx bros movies questions on a trivia game I play, which
of course I missed in their entirety, so I will say this:  not a word 
further outta my mouth about those chaps until I am more familiar
with their works.