TV vs. Reading et al

[Sojourner]

At 02:34 PM 8/18/97 BST, andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk wrote:

>Oh, it's not the money per se (it never is, is it?). No, the
>interesting thing is the presence of money in the media (which is what
>we are discussing, right? TV, films, books, newspapers etc). 

To keep this baby from spiralling into the infinity of the archives,
I will say this:  my original discussion of "TV vs. Reading" was only
that reading is a more moral act than watching TV/movies, whatever
the level of quality of each.

>Why is it
>interesting when money converges on the media? Because the media are
>where lots of people's information, and hence understanding, come
>from. And control of the media, either by sponsorship or ownership,
>gives one control not just over what information is presented but also
>how it is made available and, often, this adds up to control of how it
>is understood. And TV is particularly appealing to those who want to
>buy control because it is so easy to manipulate people's daily lives
>via TV.
>

Yep yep yep and I say in rejoinder:  its STILL legal to turn the
nasty thing off.  Interestingly, Madonna in an interview soon after
the birth of her child told us that her father had allowed her ZERO
TV access as a child, aside of course from a few hours stolen at
friends' houses etc.  She then went on to say that she was happy to
be able to give her daughter every possible advantage.  The inter-
viewer asked if that included TV viewing.  Madonna said she was
still thinking about that (after all, baby Lourdes is still an infant) but
in the end, she probably would do the same as her father, and keep
TV out of her house.

Interesting eh?


>The main reason for this is not to be found in the nature of TV
>product per se (never mind the fact that much TV conforms to a handful
>of cliched formats, TV as a medium is just as malleable, just as
>capable of infinite variety as film or words) but in the technology of
>the medium. TV is a broadcast medium which means that people can only
>watch what is showing as it is broadcast and then only according to a
>schedule devised by the programmers, usually in the same environment
>(the home), usually alone or with immediate relations and often
>accompanying their day-to-day tasks. This dictates more than anything
>else the way people use (almost have to use) TV i.e. passively,
>serially, without critical discussion and fitting their other
>activities around it. Just as, secondary cause, the relatively high
>entry cost for those who want to produce or distribute TV material
>dictates the sort of people who can decide what TV we see and how it
>is presented to us. Compare TV with the internet and see how it's
>technology (mostly asynchronous and either 1-1, multicast or
>broadcast) allows us much more flexibility on both the production and
>consumption side.
>

yeah I know.  No argument here or from anyone else I'm sure.


	"If there's one thing a man likes, its to
	 make a young girl do push-ups."

	   --Maj. Gen. Josiah Bunting (circa 1997)