Television is one thing that Americans
seem to have in common. About 99% of American households have at least one TV set. (Mine
doesn't. I haven't owned a TV since 1980.) Television is powerful and could have been
used as a mostly positive influence in our culture, but it has turned into one of the most destructive
forces in our society.
Many TV stations and networks are on the air 24 hours a day and seem to have plenty of programming
material available to fill the time. (That's partly because drive-in movies disappeared and the
"B movies" are now on UHF TV.) But if you look closely, much of that material is merely
serving as spacers between the commercial breaks. The revenue from commercials keeps the stations
on the air. Therein lies the root of TV's troubles: They have to keep your attention, so
you'll keep watching, so the ratings for that station will go up, and the advertising rates on that
station will then increase. And the cycle repeats.
This results in programming and advertising that looks like it is designed to entertain
and inform people with extremely short attention spans — people who get bored after
looking at the same thing for more than five seconds. In the business of television
news, this means less thoughtful journalism and more three-second sound bites and one-liners. It
also means that the typical TV advertisement is a 30-second frenzy of
special effects and very short edits.
The sound bite syndrome means that meaningful half-hour debates are condensed down to
the few seconds when someone raises his or her voice. That leads to political arguments (and
entire campaigns) in which the winner is the person who has come up with the greatest
number of memorable one-liners. People who base their votes
on this kind of shallow information — or on someone
else's emotional outbursts — are
likely to do more harm than good at the polls.
The effect on entertainment programming is that prime time shows are becoming more and more
salacious in an effort to attract viewers. Material that was considered unfit for
broadcast 20 or 30 years ago is now commonplace. Society's standards didn't change
overnight — the TV networks kept "pushing the envelope" gradually to get us
where we are today. The envelope has taken quite a beating, but the incremental changes
seem to go in only one direction.
Much of the blame for the deterioration of broadcasting belongs to the FCC, which has
repeatedly deregulated the industry, allowing unlimited advertising time on radio and TV,
and ownership of more than one station in each market. More stations means a diluted market
and the desperate need to attract an audience. The FCC has also abdicated its role as enforcer
of basic decency on radio and television, opening the door to FM "shock jocks" and prime time TV
programming that would have been unimaginable a few decades ago.
Some of the blame should go to the producers of network shows. Many of their creations
carry the warning, "Viewer discretion advised." (Apparently if they make that disclaimer,
it's okay to include anything in a TV show.) But why should discretion be entirely up to
the viewers? Couldn't the producers show a little discretion of their own?
The rest of the blame belongs to the audience. You could say that the FCC has just stepped aside
and let our society's downfall run its course. The government prefers to "let the market
decide" what's appropriate or unfit for broadcast, and how many stations can survive in a given
city. But the market doesn't seem to decide that anything is inappropriate. No
matter what is on the air, Americans keep watching and listening.
Newton Minow, in his famous vast
wasteland speech on May 9, 1961, said, "When television is bad, nothing is
worse." If you allow television into your home, you will not benefit from it, unless your goal is to
squander your time and take your mind off your troubles. For that purpose, television is
cheaper than alcohol and safer than heroin. Television is widely used in hospitals,
jails and laundromats as a Time Vaporizer -- it makes people less aware of
the passing time.
And you may also
enjoy The Last Empty Channel, which is about
TV Channel 37, the only TV channel that is completely empty. (Originally published
in TV Technology.)
Digital TV / HDTV
At last, here is a subject I know a little about. As a public service, I'm giving you the scoop on
the upcoming conversion to digital television, which wasn't put to a vote, but is being
quietly implemented anyway. Many people are unaware that in a few
weeks their good old TV sets will suddenly pick up nothing but snow. The FCC has undertaken
the changeover in order to make spectrum space available to the highest bidder. The official rationale
includes something about public safety or homeland security, but the bulk of the bandwidth will likely end up
in the hands of cell phone and Wi-Fi providers. Whether or not the radio spectrum is something that
can be bought and sold (or whether the FCC legitimately owns it all) is another matter.
The new digital TV stations use 8-VSB modulation. The
8-VSB mode allows HDTV broadcasters to squeeze 19.28 Mbps of data into a 6 MHz TV channel. Digital TV is all-or-nothing:
In most cases you get a perfect picture or no picture at all. That makes it a little difficult to tweak an outside antenna (by yourself) for best
reception, which is why most people just connect to cable boxes or satellite receivers. The all-or-nothing aspect will also make it difficult to
diagnose and identify TV interference problems. Your TV picture may disappear when an airplane flies over
or a truck drives by, but you probably won't see the correlation.
It will be a little complicated at first. Engineers are sometimes heard to say that "people shouldn't
have to learn how to use HDTV." But that's nonsense. People had to learn how to use microwave
ovens, and cruise control, and any number of other things. One interesting twist is that some viewers
may have to put up an outside antenna — what an anachronism! — to get good (free) HDTV
reception from over-the-air
stations.*
Your biggest problem with your HDTV receiver (it won't be my problem — I won't buy one) will be
the programming. It will still be the same mind-numbing pap that is on the air today — or
worse! My brother-in-law bought a huge new high-definition TV and he says he finds himself
watching a lot of idiotic programming just because the picture is so spectacular!
Coupons
for digital converter boxes
The cost estimate for this boondoggle started out as a mere $510 million, and of course
since the federal government was involved, that was not enough. The latest estimate is
about $1.5 billion. Will you all please ask yourselves this question:
Where will that money come from? The government is pretending to do you a favor by
giving you a "free" coupon, which is paid for by the money they took out of your paycheck!
Right
to digital? Americans have such an entitlement mentality, they seem to think
that every pleasure — e.g., digital television — should be a collective
right, meaning a federally funded entitlement.
[The gist of the above article is that the government is considering vouchers to help with the cost
of a new digital television set. Is that the proper role of government? When unleaded gas
was mandated, did the government buy everybody new cars?]
Update: Households to get
coupons for digital TV switch. Brushing aside congressional suggestions that the
nation is ill-prepared for the conversion to digital TV in 2009, the Department of Commerce on
Monday [3/12/2007] unveiled its plan to help subsidize the switchover from analog. In
the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) plan, each household can
claim two $40 coupons that they then can use toward the purchase of a set-top box that can
translate digital signals so television shows can be viewed on analog TVs.
Commerce Department Issues Final Rule To Launch
Digital-to-Analog Converter Box Coupon Program. Starting Jan. 1, 2008, all U.S. households
will be eligible to request up to two $40 coupons to be used toward the purchase of up to two, digital-to-analog
converter boxes, while the initial $990 million allocated for the program is available. If the
initial funds are used up, the [Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005] permits
funding to increase by $510 million, upon certification to
Congress that the initial allocated amount is insufficient to fulfill coupon requests.
Digital
killed the TV star. That extra $510 million is for "over-the-air households" (people who
don't have cable or satellite) only. How do you prove you're an OTA household? You say you
are. ... Anyone else like the odds for fraud/abuse/malfeasance in this program at
around 100 percent?
Congress and Digital Television:
Since the days of Ed Sullivan and Milton Berle, television has been broadcast using the same technology and
largely over the same frequencies. That is about to change.
House
OKs switch to digital TV. As a House committee approved legislation Wednesday [10/26/2005] that laid out the
nation's mandatory move to digital TV by 2009, consumer groups warned that many Americans would not be able
to afford the transition. The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the bill 33-17. … The
approved bill sets aside $990 million, which would provide 23 million coupons worth $40 to use toward the
cost of a converter. The first-come, first-serve system would allow households to apply for up to two
coupons over the Internet or by mail. Converters could cost around $60.
The Senate's $3 Billion Subsidy for Aged
Television Sets: Specifically, the legislation provides for the federal government to pick up
almost the complete cost of the set-top boxes, which it estimates to cost $50 to $60 apiece.
Consumers would be responsible for only a "co-pay" of $10. … Ultimately, however, subsidies are the wrong
thing to do. There is no federal entitlement to analog television, nor should there be one.
FCC Rules Cablers Must Provide Analog
Signals. [The FCC] says about 35 percent of all "television homes," approximately
40 million households, have analog-only sets and receive only analog signals from their cable
companies. To make sure those analog-only cable subscribers can still watch their local TV stations'
broadcasts after the transition to DTV, FCC in September adopted rules requiring cable operators to make
local broadcasters' primary video and program-related material viewable by all subscribers.
The Editor says...
Between the time a program leaves the network studio and the time it gets to the consumer's TV, the picture
will have been converted from analog to digital and back at least three or four times. Each conversion
takes its toll on the picture quality. It will be several years before the path from the studio cameras
to the consumer is all digital.
Retailers to Sell TV
Converter Boxes. Starting Jan. 1, an estimated 13 million to 21 million
households that rely on an antenna to watch TV can contact the government to receive two coupons worth
$40 each to buy converter boxes. The $1.5 billion program — which is enough
to fund 33.5 million coupons — ends March 31, 2009.
Digital
TV Transition Takes Next Step. Between January 1, 2008 and March 31, 2009, households
can request coupons while supplies last in one of four ways. … Coupons expire 90 days after they are
mailed, and only one coupon can be used to purchase each coupon-eligible converter box.
Digital TV shift
affects minorities most. Hispanics are nearly twice as likely as whites to be left without
television service following the nationwide transition to digital broadcasting next year, according to a
new survey.
64 million dollars worth of coupons so far ... 850,000
Ask Government For TV-Converter Coupons. More than 850,000 people requested
$40 coupons for converter boxes with which old television sets can receive digital signals
after the United States abandons analog broadcasts next year. Each household is entitled
to two coupons, bringing the total requested to more than 1.6 million, said Todd Sedmak, a
spokesman for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
Coupon fund for TV tuners running low. The
Feb. 17 transition from analog to digital television broadcasts looms and as many as 8 million households are
still unprepared, but the government program that subsidizes crucial TV converter boxes is about to run out of money.
People who still rely on analog TV sets to pick up over-the-air signals — whether it is through rabbit-ear
aerials on TVs or antennas on the roof — will see their screens go dark when the changeover happens.
The Editor says...
(1) If the coupon fund runs out on the day of the transition, isn't that perfect timing? Why is that a
problem? And (2) analog TVs generally don't "go dark" in the absence of a signal, as the article
above suggests. That's the beauty of analog TV: If there is a weak signal, at least you can tell
it's there, and you can see if your adjustments are helping or hurting. With digital TV, it's all or
nothing. That's why the average high school dropout is going to encounter a lot of difficulty with
the new system. Allow me to make this bold prediction: Very few people who use an outdoor
antenna (or rabbit ears) will receive all the available TV signals.
FCC Warns
Against Delaying Analog Shutoff. President-elect Barack Obama's transition team asked Congress
on Thursday [1/8/2009] to delay the shut-off, citing the Commerce Department's running out of money for
coupons that subsidize the cost of converter boxes, which allow analog TVs to receive digital signals.
The Editor interjects...
The people who exercised due diligence got their coupons, and those who waited until the
last minute may not. That's just too bad. Let them forego a few scratch-off lottery
tickets or a carton of cigarettes and buy their converter boxes with their own money. Or
just push the old TV set out to the curb and read a book.
Turmoil
Over TV Switch Grows. Plans to become a digital nation are in disarray just five weeks before
television stations are supposed to shut off analog broadcasts. Consumers do not have quick access to
coupons to purchase converter boxes, Congress is toying with postponing the switch, and now a possible way
to distribute more coupons may no longer be plausible.
$40 And A Mule.
Congress is giving out cash to help Americans make the switch to digital TV next month. Is authority
for this found in the Constitution's Commerce Clause? Or can it be located in the Bill of Rights?
Obviously, grounds for this can't be found anywhere in the Constitution. But that hasn't stopped
lawmakers from doling out other people's money on such stuff for a couple of centuries.
Fired Up About the
TV. Would someone please tell me why any of us should pay for our neighbor's digital converter
box? ... The United States taxpayer is footing the bill for TV viewers who are either too poor or uneducated
or lazy to go down to Best Buy and buy a $40.00 converter box for their TV set.
Editorial comments
Allow me to share a little conjecture about the future of television broadcasting. I predict
there will be a political upheaval when analog television service is turned off in a few
weeks. The teeming masses of the lower class who watch television all the time (no
matter what's showing) aren't going to stand for it, and they surely aren't going to want
to spend a lot of money on a converter box or a new TV. It will be a big issue on
the first election day after analog TV ends.
I don't recall any public outcry demanding digital television. (HDTV was apparently
cooked up by somebody at the FCC during the Clinton administration, as part of a scheme to sell
RF bandwidth to raise money for other government projects.) Hardly anyone had seen a
high-definition TV picture until long after the construction of HDTV stations had begun.
What's going to happen ten years later, after the transition is settled? With digital television
in place, it will be easy to encrypt all TV signals and provide the encryption keys only to those
who have paid the TV tax, much like the way television reception is taxed in England.
There is more to this digital television scheme than conservation of RF bandwidth and good pictures of
football games. The federal government's long-term plans for digital TV is, I suspect,
about monitoring, taxing and regulating everything you watch.
The Broadcast Flag
The Broadcast Flag: The FCC's Lockdown of Digital
Television. You [had] until July 2005 to get a DTV tuner card that ignores the broadcast
flag. While this won't help you with cable or satellite TV programming, at least you'll retain your
freedom to make digital recordings and copies of network TV programs.
Misleading Term of the Week: "Broadcast
Flag". Hollywood doesn't need to ask for a true broadcast flag. The standards for
digital television broadcasting already have a place for such a flag. No government action
is needed to allow Hollywood to use a flag to indicate the broadcast status of a program.
Update: Appeals
court tosses FCC's broadcast flag rule. A U.S. appeals court on
Friday [5/6/2005] struck down a Federal Communications Commission rule designed to
limit people from sending copies of digital television programs over the Internet.
Court yanks down FCC's broadcast flag.
In a stunning victory for hardware makers and television buffs, a federal appeals court has tossed out
government rules that would have outlawed many digital TV receivers and tuner cards starting
July 1 [2005].
The Transition to Digital TV
Editor's note:
In case you run across this page twenty years from now while doing a little historical research, the original
analog-to-digital transition date was February 17, 2009. That was pushed back to June 12, 2009, and even though
every television station issued hundreds of warnings about the transition, thousands of people were unprepared.
TV Stations' Digital Conversion Confuses 700,000.
Nearly 700,000 calls were received by a federal hot line this week from people confused about the nationwide switch
from analog to digital TV broadcasts that occurred Friday [6/12/2009]. The Federal Communications Commission
said Saturday that about 317,450 calls went into the help line, 1-888-CALL-FCC, on Friday alone, the day
analog signals were cut off.
The Hawaiian transition: While the national DTV
transition will be on February 17, 2009, Hawai'i will transition at 12 noon on January 15, 2009.
HD Boycott dot com: The purpose of this site is to
encourage people to not buy the new high definition DVD technologies which seek to greatly reduce
or eliminate the concept of fair use and first sale rights. Don't buy any new HD gear
without getting the facts or you might will regret it later.
Pushing Quick Switch To
Digital TV. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and other industry leaders urged lawmakers
Friday [10/14/2005] to speed the transition to digital television in order to free up radio spectrum
for wireless broadband services, especially in rural and poor areas.
[Yeah, right. Bill Gates didn't get rich by selling products in rural and poor areas.]
Nielsen: Households Not Ready for
Digital TV. "[I]f there is even one TV in a cable/satellite household that is not plugged into the
service — for example, it is used to watch DVDs or play video games — Nielsen counts that
household as unprepared," [says Megan Pollock of the Consumer Electronics Association]. "For the
86 percent of U.S. households that subscribe to cable or satellite, the DTV transition does not
impact their ability to watch TV."
The Editor says...
I think Nielsen also knows — but isn't saying — that about 1.8 percent
of American households do not have a television at all. At least that's what
the Statistical
Abstract of the United States has been saying for several years.
The citizens of Wales were allowed to vote on the issue before analog TV was turned
off.*
Closely related: You'll Buy It, and You Will Like
It. Most homes have cable or satellite, and little use for a new tuner to receive digital
signals via antenna. The FCC will force them to buy it anyway. … There are 107 million
total TV households. Only twelve percent use TV antennas — the rest have cable
and/or satellite reception.
The few people in this country who still use "rabbit ears" don't care about crystal-clear
high-definition TV pictures. Many of them are still watching black-and-white
televisions. They just want the basics. They didn't ask for digital TV and
they aren't going to like it when analog TV is turned off. (If they spend $1000 for a new TV,
they will obviously spend an extra $79 for a good antenna.) The number of people
watching analog TV from an antenna – not cable or satellite – is
relatively small, as shown in this next item:
Yes, but that still leaves 13% of 110 million households, which comes out
to 14.3 million TV sets that will suddenly stop working. Many of those
useless TV sets will be in the hands of people who will claim they can't afford a
new one (even though they can afford cigarettes and beer). I hope the politicians don't
get the idea that the government should provide television sets to everyone who wants them.
House sets digital TV transition for
February 2009. The bill allocates $990 million to $1.5 billion for a subsidy
program that would permit those whose TVs still rely on analog broadcasts to request up to two $40
coupons for digital-to-analog converter boxes.
Free advice:
Analog TV broadcasting will end in February, 2009, a few weeks after
the presidential election. When that day comes, please remember that television is not
essential to life, nor is it an inalienable right. In fact, you'd be better off without a
television in your house. Take the opportunity, when the analog stations are turned off,
to give it up once and for all. Don't waste any more time and money on TV!
Even if the picture is technically flawless, TV content is the big problem. Television
is one of the most destructive forces at work in this country. If you rely on television
"news" coverage, I urge you to turn off your television set and get your information from more reliable
sources. (At least begin to challenge the assumption that everything you hear on television is
true.) If you use television to absorb your spare time and satisfy your hunger for
cheap entertainment, you would be much better off with a well-written book.
'Rabbit Ears' Find New Life in HDTV
Age. Local TV channels, broadcast in HD over-the-air, offer superior picture quality over the
often-compressed signals sent by cable and satellite TV companies. And the best part? Over-the-air
HD is free.
The Dawn of Digital TV. Today more than 1500
broadcast digital-TV stations are on the air. Nearly the entire U.S. population lives in markets with
at least one digital broadcast signal available, and more than 90 percent live in areas with five or
more such signals.
Congress and Digital Television:
The digital transition has proceeded at a snail's pace. … Almost no one is watching over-the-air DTV
broadcasts. While close to ten percent of households have digital television sets, the content mostly
comes through cable, satellite, and DVDs. Only two percent of households own TV sets that can receive
digital broadcasts.
Spectrum Allocation for Emergency
Communications. Last summer, a newly formed company called Cyren Call — headed by Nextel
founder Morgan O'Brien — proposed that 30 megahertz of radio spectrum be reallocated to public safety
users. … Under Cyren Call's plan, 30 megahertz of the 60 megahertz planned for auction would
instead be given free of charge to a new "Public Safety Broadband Trust." This trust — apparently
to be created by the FCC itself — would represent state, local, and federal public safety users.
In turn, the trust would contract with private sector firms to build and operate an advanced broadband
network using this spectrum.
For those of you who don't know, 30 MHz of spectrum space is enough to accommodate five HDTV stations.
Without moving a lot of TV stations to different RF channels, there is not (and never will be) a
30 MHz block of unoccupied spectrum.
Disappearing
TV spectrum fetches $20 billion. A US government auction of the wireless frequencies soon to be
given up by television companies as they switch to digital transmissions has raised a record $19.59 billion.
The winners of the valuable spectrum will likely use it for new wireless data services for computers and mobile
devices, but the victors' identities have not yet been revealed. The 700-megahertz ultra high frequency
(UHF) spectrum is being given up by television broadcasters as they move to digital from analog signals in
early 2009.
Articles like the one above raise a number of questions. Is the radio spectrum something the FCC
owns — something the FCC can sell? When this concept is widely accepted, will the FCC begin to charge
TV stations and other wide-bandwidth users for the rental of spectrum space? The article says that the
new owners "will likely use it for new wireless data services." Does the FCC sell RF spectrum
without knowing exactly what it will be used for?
No TV Left Behind: There is no federal right to analog television, nor should there be. Viewers have no more
right to existing TV technology than they did to vinyl records or Betamax video recorders. Viewers
have been on notice of the transition to digital television for more than a decade, and those who
prepared for it should not have to subsidize those who did not.
FCC will allow unlicensed devices in analog
TV spectrum. The FCC has just announced the roadmap for giving unlicensed wireless devices access
to empty "white spaces" in the current analog TV spectrum. US spectrum is at a premium (just consider the
astronomical fees paid by cell phone providers to grab a chunk of it), and the FCC wants to ensure that space
is available for innovative unlicensed technology.
Broadcasters
Oppose Google's Plea For White Spaces. The battle for the white spaces is far from being over,
as Google co-founder Larry Page pleaded once more for the Federal Communications Commission to approve the
free, unlicensed use of the slices of spectrum in between television channels. ... Over 90 percent of
the wireless spectrum in the U.S. is not being used, and Google, together with Microsoft, Dell, Intel, HP
and others target just that.
The Editor says... Nonsense! The rash pronouncement that "Over 90 percent of the wireless spectrum in the U.S.
is not being used" reveals a complete disconnection with reality. Was it someone from Google who made
this statement, or was this the writer's estimate? In either case, the absurd "90%" assessment would
surely come as a great surprise to the FCC. In the first place, how do you measure 90% of the RF
spectrum, which includes unusably-high and -low frequency bands? Second, a single radio channel may be
quiet most of the time (in a given locale), but that doesn't mean there is not a licensed user who is authorized to use that
frequency exclusively. Third, the new digital TV stations are able to operate on adjacent channels only
because they are sharply filtered. Wireless networking appliances operating on TV channels that the
users think are vacant would reduce the TV broadcast channels to another CB radio band, with
every user shouting down the others.
The DTV transition countdown shows how much time remains until
analog television stations are turned off.
UK to start digital TV switchover, but Australia
is still in the dark ages. Politicians ... do know people. Cut off millions of registered
voters from their drug of choice and they'll take it out at the polls. It's probably no coincidence that
the death of analogue broadcasting comes only months after the 2008 US elections, giving politicians almost
four years to sort out the mess.
Time to Revisit FCC Set-Top Box Rules.
Verizon and other telephone companies are rushing into the video business. The two DBS service
operators — DirecTV and Dish Network — have done an about-face and are now supporting
equipment containing mainly proprietary features. And Congress finally has set a firm February 2009 date
for the transition away from analog to all-digital broadcast television transmission. With the changed
landscape, this is a case crying out for regulatory relief.
HDTVs prompting antennas'
comeback. Rooftop antennas are back in vogue. Many people are trading up to expensive
television sets and hooking them up to old-fashioned antennas that can pull in the digital and high-definition
signals of local broadcasters for free. That's right, free. You only get the signals of local
broadcast stations — ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, etc. — but there's no monthly cable or
satellite fee and no need for a set-top box.
FCC
chair promotes post-digital TV rule. Here's the pitch from the cable TV industry: One way
or another, all subscribers will still be able to tune in their favorite shows when broadcasters shift to
digital-only transmission in 2009. Seeking more than a promise, Federal Communications Commission
Chairman Kevin Martin wants commissioners to require cable companies to provide that service.
HD enthusiasts crying
foul over cable TV's crunched signals. As cable TV companies pack ever more HD channels into
limited bandwidth, some owners of pricey plasma, projector and LCD TVs are complaining that they're not
getting the high-def quality they paid for. They blame the increased signal compression being used to
squeeze three digital HD signals into the bandwidth of one analog station. The problem is viewers want
more HD channels at a time when many cable and satellite providers are at the limits of their capacity, said
Jim Willcox, a technology editor for Consumer Reports magazine.
Energy-guzzling plasma TVs will be banned in Brussels eco blitz.
The plasma screen television is poised to become the next victim of the battle to curb energy use. Giant
energy-guzzling flatscreens are expected to be banned under legislation due to be agreed by the EU this spring.
Plasma screens have been nicknamed the '4x4s' of the living room because they use up to four times as much electricity
and are responsible for up to four times as much carbon dioxide as traditional cathode ray tube sets.
The Editor says...
(1) They only "guzzle" energy because that's exactly the way the owners want to spend their time and money,
and (2) carbon dioxide is a plant nutrient, not a pollutant.
State considers
ban on big screen TVs. In their continuing quest to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, state regulators
have uncovered a new villain in the war on global warming: your big screen TV. Couch potatoes, beware.
The California Energy Commission is considering a proposal that would ban California retailers from selling all but the
most energy-efficient televisions. Critics say the news standards could take 25 percent of televisions off
the market — most of them 40 inches or larger.
Who Should Decide the
Size of Your TV? As part of its effort to combat global warming, California is considering a proposal to
regulate big-screen TVs off the market.
FCC Throws Lifeline to Analog Cable-TV
Customers. The Federal Communications Commission approved rules Tuesday night [9/11/2007] that
it says will ensure that millions of cable subscribers will still be able to watch broadcast programming after
the digital television transition in 2009. The FCC says approximately 40 million households are
analog-only cable subscribers. Tuesday's ruling will require cable operators to guarantee analog cable
customers will receive broadcast channels until February 2012.
Cable Prices
Keep Rising, and Customers Keep Paying. Cable prices have risen 77 percent since 1996, roughly double the
rate of inflation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this month. Cable customers, who typically pay at least
$60 a month, watch only a fraction of what they pay for — on average, a mere 13 percent of the 118 channels
available to them. And the number of subscribers keeps growing. The resiliency of cable is all the more remarkable
because the Internet was supposed to change all things digital.
Cutting Cable:
Companies Losing Customers. Porter McConnell gave up on pay TV last summer after noticing
that monthly rates kept creeping up. Now with no satellite or cable TV, she watches her trusty old TV
set with an antenna or she goes online to catch her favorite programs.
The
Night The TVs Go Out. The industry has tried to get the word out, but many consumers still
aren't getting the message: In a year and a half, millions of television screens could go
dark. Not the fancy high-definition TVs or those connected to cable or satellite.
But the 70 million sets relying on rooftop or "rabbit ears" antennas will end up showing
nothing but snow.
FCC
to warn TV viewers: 'This is only a test'. Representatives of the Federal Communications
Commission are scheduled to visit Chicago on Nov. 20 as part of a nationwide tour to regions that are
considered at risk for missing the switch from analog to digital TV signals. While regulators haven't
detailed their itinerary for Chicago, one of the options to test local households' readiness is what's known
as a "soft test," or temporarily turning off analog signals. In a soft test, the signal is shut
down for 30 to 60 seconds.
The Editor gets technical...
The article goes on to say that the analog stations will air an announcement for 30 seconds, meaning
that they won't actually be "shut down". It's just a mandatory PSA -- another in a long series
of government announcements that have been largely ignored. If the analog stations did shut
down for a minute, who would notice? Many stations have direct fiber-optic feeds to the local cable
TV outlets, so it doesn't matter if the analog station is on the air or not. All that aside, will the
"soft test" take place only on the stations' analog transmitters? That would require separate feeds to the
analog and digital transmitters, which many stations do not have. Moreover, most TV viewers are conditioned
to ignore commercials, and most viewers see this type of announcement as just another commercial.
The other digital-TV transition: "Like any
business, we change our offering from time to time," said Alex Dudley, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable. "Our
customers won't have to do a thing when the over-the-air digital transition occurs in 2009. But we are also
migrating some of our channels to a higher digital tier to make room for new services. And if customers want to
receive those channels, they'll have to rent a box." Some consumer advocates say that the timing of these channel
moves is suspicious considering it coincides with the broadcasters' transition to digital.
FCC
fines cable operators over channel changes. The Federal Communications Commission is fining nine cable TV
operators for attempting to thwart its investigation of a practice in which analog channels were transferred to a more
expensive digital tier, leaving some customers without access.
Attention, rabbit-ears users, your time is short.
Nearly a quarter of Minnesota households now get TV over the air with antennas, according to Nielsen Online.
The state has the fourth-highest percentage of U.S. homes using just broadcast television, the research firm
says. So with the switch approaching, local stations plan to step up their nagging via their analog
transmissions (those already tuning in to the newer digital transmissions won't see the nags).
The Editor says...
The antenna itself — rabbit ears or outdoor antenna — will not become obsolete
on February 17. It is only the analog tuner that won't be of much use. And even
after February, you should still be able to see some low-power TV stations.
Senate blocks digital TV delay. Senate Republicans on
Friday [1/16/2009] blocked a bill that would have delayed next month's nationwide shutdown of analog TV signals until
June 12, but Democrats vowed to bring the measure back for a vote next week. The bill was defeated even after
President-elect Barack Obama on Friday urged lawmakers to postpone the Feb. 17 transition amid mounting concerns
that too many Americans who rely on analog TV sets to pick up broadcast channels won't be ready.
Senate Nears
Deal To Delay Digital TV. Key senators have reached a compromise on a bill that would delay the
nation's switch to all-digital television from next month until June 12. A vote on the legislation is
expected early next week.
Delay in analog TV shutdown
presents challenges. With the clock ticking toward the Feb. 17 deadline for TV broadcasters to shut
off their analog signals and go entirely digital, analysts say more than 6.5 million households are not ready.
Now Congress appears poised to postpone the transition to June — but a delay could bring its own problems.
The Editor says...
Allow me to reiterate: If you lose your ability to watch TV for a while, that might be the best
thing that could happen to you.
Digital TV Beckons, but Many Miss the
Call. Vesta Clemmons, who is 77 and lives alone, relies on the battered Zenith television in her tiny
apartment here as more than just a lifeline to the outside world. ... [And she was about to be left without free
television reception but] Ultimately she received peace of mind from an unlikely source: Meals on Wheels. For
several months now, drivers and volunteers for the Houston-area program have been delivering and installing digital
converter boxes for its clients — as a side dish alongside the baked chicken and stewed peaches that are
their usual fare. Ms. Clemmons's turn came last week.
Senate
OKs 4-month delay to digital TV changeover. The Senate on Monday [1/26/2009] voted unanimously
to postpone the upcoming transition from analog to digital television broadcasting by four months to
June 12 -- setting the stage for Congress to pass the proposal as early as Tuesday. Monday's
Senate vote is a big victory for the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress, who have been pushing
for a delay amid growing concerns that too many Americans won't be ready for the currently scheduled
Feb. 17 changeover.
The Editor says...
The US Congress, to a great extent, is made up of people who can't make up their minds, can't hold
themselves to a deadline, don't understand the industries they regulate, and can't resist the slightest
pressure from lobbyists whimpering about the underprivileged losing "access." Television is not
vital to everyday life. If you were too lazy and stupid to get ready for the DTV transition, after all
the relentless publicity about the change, you deserve to be left in the digital dust, wondering what
happened.
House
defeats bill to delay digital TV transition. Bucking the Obama administration, House Republicans
on Wednesday [1/28/2009] defeated a bill to postpone the upcoming transition from analog to digital television
broadcasting to June 12 — leaving the current Feb. 17 deadline intact for now. The
258-168 vote failed to clear the two-thirds threshold needed for passage. It's a victory for the GOP
members, who warn that postponing the transition would confuse consumers.
Update: Senate
Once Again Passes Bill to Delay Transition to Digital TV. For the second time, the Senate unanimously passed
a bill Thursday night [1/29/2009] to delay the transition to digital television by four months in order to give consumers
more time to get ready.
With DTV
delay likely, some stations to switch anyway. Despite a setback in the House of Representatives
last week, Congress appears to be set this week to extend the DTV transition to June 12. Even so,
many television stations appear to be sticking to the Feb. 17 deadline for the switch.
More updates: House approves
DTV delay until June. By a vote of 264 to 158, the U.S. House of Representatives voted Wednesday
to delay the DTV transition deadline until June 12. The House action effectively ends the efforts
by those, mostly Republicans, to maintain the original Feb. 17 DTV transition deadline.
House votes to delay digital TV transition.
The House voted today 264-158 to delay the analog TV shutdown until June 12. The nation was two
weeks away from the original date of Feb. 17 for the digital transition, allowing broadcasters to replace
analog TV signals with digital ones. But the Obama administration and many Democrats asked for the
delay, saying millions of people are not ready for the switch.
US
analog TV shutdown bolder, riskier than most. The U.S. has planned for more than a decade to
have TV broadcasters turn off their analog signals, yet when the Feb. 17 deadline loomed, it flinched,
delaying the mandatory shutdown for four months. The delay, which causes confusion for TV viewers and
havoc for broadcasters, is a symptom of the unique way the U.S. conceived the shutdown: No other big
country has dared to, or plans to, end its analog TV broadcasts all in one go.
25% Of TV Stations Stay With Digital
Plans. More than a quarter of major U.S. TV stations intend to shut down their analog broadcasts on
Feb. 17, sticking to the original date despite the wish of the Obama administration that they delay until
June. Congress last week gave TV stations until June 12 to shut down analog broadcasts, hoping to give
viewers more time to prepare. Money has run out for the federal fund that subsidizes converter boxes, and
there's a wait list for the coupons.
For millions, digital TV deadline still is
now. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a coalition of 200 advocacy groups, has digital TV assistance
centers in seven metropolitan areas — Atlanta, Detroit, San Antonio, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Ore., and
St. Paul, Minn. — to answer questions, demonstrate converter boxes and sometimes make house calls. In San
Diego, the ABC, CBS, Fox and CW affiliates plan to end analog broadcasts Tuesday [2/17/2009].
I Want My DTV. Don't change
that channel. If you've turned on a TV in the past six months, you've probably heard that today,
February 17, 2009, is the day that broadcast television is supposed to switch to digital signals from
analog. After the transition, older televisions that are not hooked up to cable, satellite or fiber-optic
service won't work. But here's the rub. Today [2/17/2009] was the day the big switch was supposed to happen.
It was written into law back in 2005.
DTV Transition Failure Leads Man to
Shoot TV. A man angry about the shut-off of his cable-television service and subsequent inability to convert
his analog TV to pick up DTV signals shot his television set Wednesday afternoon, scaring his wife out of the house and
holding off a SWAT team in a two-hour standoff.
Some May Lose Out With Digital TV.
Congress thought Americans' free TV service would get better, not disappear, when it first ordered broadcasters to
shut down older analog TV signals as of Feb. 17. Instead, millions of Americans who rely on free, over-the-air
TV could lose one or more channels after the extended deadline for the digital switch in June — even if they
bought a converter box.
Don't
adjust your antenna, adjust your government. I soon had the box unpacked, the cables plugged in,
the channels set and scanned. I was looking forward to the promised crystal-clear picture on at least
four or five channels. I got a Spanish-language station, but the picture kept freezing or the screen
would go black. Then I would get a no-signal announcement and was advised onscreen to check the antenna
connections...
Boo hoo. Your old TV doesn't work. Whose fault is that? Millions Face Blank Screens in
TV Switch. Millions of households will lose television reception next week when about 1,000 broadcasters around
the nation shut off their analog signals and complete their conversion to digital programming, federal officials say.
Viewer anger likely
with Friday TV signal switch. The government is bracing for "significant problems" when the U.S.
switches to digital TV on Friday, acting Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Copps says.
Consumers fiddling with antennas and converter boxes, which must be rescanned post-switch, will account for
most problems. "There're going to be some angry consumers," Copps says. The switch to digital TV,
or DTV, will start at 12:01 a.m. ET Friday. At that time, 974 full-power stations that cover major
markets such as New York and Los Angeles will start shutting down analog signals. The transition is
expected to be done by midnight.
Battery-powered TVs useless this storm season.
Without power for 12 days during Hurricane Ike, Houston secretary Donna Clanton relied on her battery-powered TV for news
updates, road closings and notices of flooded intersections. "Actually seeing what was happening made me feel more
connected and a little less isolated," Clanton said.
The Editor says...
It's must be amazing to these people that anyone survived before television came along.
Closed Captioning
Closed Captioning started out as a simple favor to those less fortunate and has turned into
an entitlement. It is now mandatory. But it costs a lot of money to put closed captioning into
reruns of old sit-coms, and the TV stations will almost certainly pass the cost along to
the advertisers, who will then pass the cost along to you, whether you watch
TV or not.
Occasionally during a commercial break on TV, you may hear an announcement such as, "Closed captioning of this
program is sponsored by...", followed by one or more commercials. I find it hard to believe that sponsors
sign up for commercial time to pay for closed captioning, since closed captioning is required by the FCC,
and the station has to provide it anyway.
The FCC says, "Closed captions provide a critical link to news, entertainment, and information for
individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing, enabling these individuals to be part of the cultural
mainstream of our
society."*
That is simply nonsense. Television is not an essential part of life, or of civilized
society. In fact our society was more civilized before television came along. In any event, a
person can be "part of the cultural mainstream of our society" without watching television.
The FCC's Closed Captioning Fact
Sheet says, "Closed captioning is an assistive technology designed to
provide access to television for persons who are deaf and hard of hearing."
Usually when you see the word "access" it is a code word for the implementation of special rights
and privileges for a protected and politically sensitive minority. Everybody has
access to television; sometimes a little too much access. If a person can't make
sense of a television program without being able to hear the sound, that person isn't
missing anything. I can see where it would be reasonable to require closed captioning
on a tornado warning, but to require it on nearly 100% of all programs (no matter how
old, unpopular, or self-explanatory) is the kind of foolishness one can expect
from an overgrown government.
Brief History of Closed captioning:
The engineering department of the Public Broadcasting System started to work on the [closed captioning] project
in 1973, under contract to the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped of the Department of Health, Education
and Welfare (HEW). The Federal Communications Commission set aside line 21 in 1976, for the
transmission of closed captions in the United States.
The Editor says...
I should have known that the Department of HEW was in on this. For those of you too young to remember,
HEW changed its name in 1979 to Health and Human Services, to get away from the well-deserved stigma of the
name Welfare, and to spin off the Department of Education into its own enormous entity. The two
departments devour a total of about $123 billion a year. But that's another topic.
Newest disabled
right: audio TV captioning. The FCC has proposed that TV networks
be compelled to provide at least four hours of programming a week with "secondary
audio" descriptions of filmed action in hopes of giving blind viewers an "equivalent
experience" to what sighted viewers are getting.
Editor's Note:
Common sense should tell you that "blind viewers" will never have an "equivalent
experience" sitting in front of a TV, no matter what provisions are made by the
broadcasters.
Timeline of Closed Captioning
Development. Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 enacted,
requiring all federally funded public service announcements to be closed captioned.
This kind of incrementalism only goes one direction. First it's applied to
television, then to movies in theaters, and before long it will be required on
DVDs, video games, and anything that can be shown on a television.
Deaf group files
lawsuit against movie theaters. Invoking the Americans with Disabilities
Act, eight hearing-impaired persons in Portland, Oregon have filed what aspires to the
status of a national class action seeking to force three large cinema chains, Regal,
Century, and Carmike, to install closed captioning devices for films in their theaters.
ADA
Goes to the Movies. The movie-theater snob looks for big screens, high-end sound,
legroom, and the newest innovation, stadium seating. If you're a movie-theater snob,
chances are you worship at the altar of AMC theaters because they are the gold-standard of
the cineplex world. So naturally, the Department of Justice is trying to put them
out of business.
Movie theaters face suit over lack of
captioned films. For most cinema buffs, silent movies went out with the Coolidge administration
eight decades ago. But for film fans who are hard of hearing, today's theaters offer little beyond an
indecipherable silence. Captioned showings remain rare, and existing technology that would allow
attendees to read along at their seats is rarely used.
The V-Chip:
An ineffective substitute for parental supervision.
If you bring a television into your house, you know exactly what you're getting into. Whether your
TV set has the V-Chip or not, if you see offensive programs on TV, it's only because you failed to push
the POWER OFF button.
Parents Have the Tools to Control TV
Content. What's so troubling about calls for increased media regulation/censorship in the
name of "protecting children" is that it ignores the fact parents have at their disposal many
constructive alternatives to censorship.
When the Chips Are Off: If
Americans overwhelmingly favor the V-chip, why don't they use it? In his 1996 State of the Union
address, President Clinton urged Congress "to pass the requirement for a 'V' chip in TV sets,
so that parents can screen out programs they believe are inappropriate for their children." He
said the technology would enable parents "to assume more personal responsibility for their children's
upbringing." This was an odd way to characterize the V-chip, which actually represented an abdication
of parental responsibility. Instead of monitoring what their kids watch and deciding for themselves
what was appropriate, parents would rely on ratings assigned by the networks. There would be no need
for active supervision or discussion: Once the V-chip was programmed, everything would
be automatic.
The
obscene "reality" at MTV. There's approximately one instance of foul
language every three minutes. None of that onslaught would be caught by your
supposedly foolproof V-chip, since MTV is skipping out on identifying its own filth.
The networks are
fighting a two-faced war. To parents and the general public, they talk of social responsibility,
and spend hundreds of millions of dollars talking up their V-chip, and how they aid parents to navigate the
channels. But in court filings, and in the councils of power, the networks are unmasked for what they
are: people who believe in no limits, no standards, no scruples. It's an industry that is just a
profitable assembly line of garbage, and wants the "right" to offend many millions of families, using the
public airwaves owned by those families to do so.
Ratings, V-Chips
and Self-Policing: "The ratings system is a fraud, and therefore the V-chip
is, by extension, useless," said PTC Founder and President Brent Bozell upon the release
of the April 2005 special report The Ratings Sham. The report studied 638 different
shows during 2003 and 2004 on the seven broadcast networks. Among its major findings:
• Every network had problems with accurate and consistent application of content descriptors.
• NBC didn't use any content descriptors on its programs.
• 81% of CBS's TV-14-rated shows contained sexual dialog yet lacked the "D" descriptor.
• 43% of the Fox shows were missing appropriate content descriptors.
• 73% of ABC's TV-14-rated shows lacked appropriate content descriptors.
• 82% of WB's TV-14-rated shows containing sexual behavior lacked the "S" descriptor.
Cable's
creepy lobbyists. For the V-chip to work effectively, it must rely on an
accurate ratings system. This ratings system is at best wildly inconsistent, with
each network making its own decisions determining what is or isn't offensive in its own
programming. At worst, it's a joke.
The
V-chip is no magic pill. For starters, most parents have no idea how this
V–chip works or know that their TV set even contains one. A survey done by
the Kaiser Family Foundation discovered that only 15 percent of parents they
surveyed have used the V–chip.
Say
Goodbye to Family Friendly TV. Avoiding objectionable material has become more difficult, despite
V-chips, which allow parents to control access to certain programs. And one of the more toxic areas is
now the ads. Not only do commercials try to use sex to sell everything from automobiles to soap, it
seems half the ads on TV now are marketing sex itself in the form of sex-enhancing drugs. And there's no
avoiding the ads, no matter how careful you are with selecting your programming.
The TV Boss. A web site developed by the Ad Council to
explain how to use the V-Chip. (If you can't figure out how to use the V-Chip, would you be able to
get to this web site?)
NBC
slices and dices "Veggie Tales". This is one of those moments where you understand that networks
like NBC are only talking an empty talk and walking an empty walk when it comes to the First Amendment, and
"creative integrity," and so on. They have told parents concerned about their smutty programs like "Will
and Grace" that if they're offended, they have a remote control as an option. The networks have spent
millions insisting that we have a V-chip in our TV sets. Change the channel. Block it out.
But when it comes to religious programming — programming that doesn't even mention Jesus
Christ — just watch the hypocrisy.
TV's
trouble with religion: For an industry that claims to reflect reality,
the results are not good. Religion is virtually ignored, and when covered,
more often than not it's attacked.
Senseless Violence
and the FCC's attempts to put a lid on it.
More Television, More Crime? In the fight
against senseless violence, Hollywood remains a tempting target. But don't blame the remote
control. Blame a remote dad.
FCC
Seeks To Rein In Violent TV Shows. The Federal Communications Commission has concluded that regulating
TV violence is in the public interest, particularly during times when children are likely to be
viewers — typically between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., FCC sources say. The agency's
recommendations — which will be released in a report to Congress within the next week, agency
officials say — could set up a legal battle between Washington and the television industry.
ACLU Fires Back. Although Sen. Jay
Rockefeller (D-WV) grabbed the spotlight with his attack on TV violence, little noticed at the time was a
proposal by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) to craft a bill strengthening the FCC's profanity-regulation powers and
giving it authority to regulate violence. The American Civil Liberties Union wrote to legislators asking
them to oppose such a move.
The Editor says...
The ACLU's position is surprising: They see no need to regulate profanity on television
because of the "technologies enabling parents to control content". They assume that children
are the only people adversely affected by violence on TV, and that everybody makes use of the V-Chip and
the POWER OFF button.
Media Violence and
the American Public: Scientific Facts Versus Media Misinformation. Over the last 50 years,
the average news report has changed from claims of a weak link to a moderate link and then back to a weak link
[between media violence and aggression]. However, since 1975 the scientific confidence and statistical
magnitude of this link has been clearly positive and has consistently increased over time.
The
Ancient Problem of TV Violence. How ancient is the concern over violence on television and its
effects on society? Crack open a cobwebbed copy of Lyndon Johnson's National Commission on the Causes
and Prevention of Violence from 1969, where it reads, "Public concern for violence in entertainment television
programming has been with us since at least 1954." In other words, go back to the days when people were
still using their first TV sets. You'd also discover reading this report that even back then, the TV
industry execs were trying to duck and weave out of any public concerns.
[The "violence" that LBJ saw on television was probably just a fistfight on "Bonanza."]
TV violence found to be more
frequent, graphic. America's children are being exposed to more dead bodies, fistfights and
perverts than ever before, according to an analysis of violence on prime-time television released yesterday by
the Parents Television Council. Violent content from 8 to 11 p.m. on weekdays jumped
75 percent from 1998 to 2006, largely because of popular crime-solving shows and medical dramas
such as "Law and Order" and "CSI," the Los Angeles nonprofit concluded in its report, titled "Dying
to Entertain."
Here is their report: Dying to
Entertain. TV violence has become a paradox of sorts. Medical and social science have proven
conclusively that children are adversely affected by exposure to it — yet millions of parents think
nothing of letting their children watch C.S.I. or other, equally violent programs. Prominent leaders
in the entertainment industry publicly decry violent entertainment — but then continue to produce and
distribute it. Despite the widespread consensus that TV violence is a significant problem, it has
become not only more frequent, but more graphic in recent years.
Remote control:
On Tuesday [6/26/2007], the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing to discuss whether there is too much violence
on cable and satellite TV and what to do about it. The issue of TV violence is the baby of Kevin J.
Martin, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, who was scheduled to testify, but canceled at the
last minute for family reasons. Martin thinks there is too much violence on subscription TV.
Criticism of TV in General — and of the FCC
You probably know people who leave their television on all the time just for background noise.
I know a few, and I also know people who watch less-than-mediocre programs "because that was all that
was on." Television seems to be the primary source of entertainment for almost everyone — an
indispensable part of their everyday routine. But about 1980 I realized there was channel after channel
of nothing worth watching, and gave away my last television set. You'd be surprised how much
spare time that opens up.
If you watch fifty hours of television every week, you might see one or two minutes of material that
was informative, fresh, edifying or uplifting. Something you're glad you watched. But the
rest of the time you're probably thinking to yourself, "What a pointless show!" or, "What a stupid
commercial!" It's like digging through a barrel of garbage, knowing there's a perfectly good
chocolate chip cookie in there somewhere. It just isn't worth immersing yourself in garbage
to occasionally find one little morsel.
Hollyork Nation: Denunciations of television have
become as routine as breathing: the programming is crass, stupid, propagandistic, so bad that only
an idiot would watch it yet everybody does. Actually things are worse. They are much
worse. To see what is happening, start with what may be the crucial truth of our times:
People will watch a screen. They will watch anything in preference to nothing, watch programs they
don't really like, comedies so unfunny that only the laugh track tells them when to respond. The
bright know that the fare is witless, that it is directed at fools. The ads irritate them. Yet
they too watch. People cannot not watch television.
Television
Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor. Perhaps the most ironic aspect of the struggle for survival
is how easily organisms can be harmed by that which they desire. The trout is caught by the
fisherman's lure, the mouse by cheese. But at least those creatures have the excuse that bait and
cheese look like sustenance. Humans seldom have that consolation. The temptations that
can disrupt their lives are often pure indulgences.
Why
TV Addiction Links to Liberalism: An important new study from the Culture and
Media Institute shows that those who describe themselves as "heavy" TV viewers embrace
distinctly liberal attitudes on a range of crucial issues, placing them well to the left
of those who report "light" TV viewing.
We're
Struck Dumb. The award show is cotton candy television at its most vacuous. There's no
story line to follow. It's just a parade of famous people there for our viewing pleasure.
Horsehide Hangover. I
have given up wondering when sports — which used to be a way to encourage young men away from more dissolute
pursuits — has now embraced all that is debased in our modern culture; the objectification of women as sex
toys, vulgar language, egotism, and violence. All of this was on display during "The Hangover" promo and another
one for a flick aptly titled, "Drag Me to Hell;" both of which would have never appeared in prime time a few short years
ago, but now invade our homes on a Saturday afternoon. Sadly, the trash emitted from Hollywood has now found its
way onto the playing field; so much so that I sometimes feel that baseball itself has become some kind of perverted
cross-promotion.
HDTV's
turning Americans into couch potatoes. The numbers are in, and it appears that high-definition
television is getting Americans to spend more time glued to their TV than ever before. … At a minimum,
consumers seem to find high-definition TV a more compelling experience. In a survey conducted on behalf
of ESPN, 22 percent of sports fans said they watched sporting events they would not have watched because
they now have HDTV.
Soap Operas Blamed For Lack Of Babies.
Researchers trying to discover why Brazil's fertility rate has plummeted in recent decades think they have found
the problem: Brazilians watch too many soap operas. The London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research
(CEPR) says that unrealistically small families portrayed in the hugely popular programmes influence the number
of children women want.
Remembering the Nixon official who gave us
cable television. When [Clay T.] Whitehead arrived at the White House in 1970,
nobody — not him, and certainly not the Nixon administration he was joining — could
have foreseen the giant deregulatory snowball he was about to set rolling downhill.
Cable Company Bills Tornado Victim $2,000 for
Damaged Equipment. Time Warner Cable billed a number of Wheatland [Wisconsin] residents for
equipment destroyed in the Jan. 7 twister that struck the southeast corner of the state. [Ann]
Beam's bill covered five cable boxes and five remote controls. She immediately called the cable
company, but a man who identified himself as a manager said there was nothing the company could
do. … [But then, after the news media picked up the story,] Time Warner Cable spokeswoman
Celeste Flynn said Beam's case was simply a misunderstanding.
Writers
vote to end strike that crippled Hollywood. Striking Hollywood writers are going back to work.
The Writers Guild of America said its members voted Tuesday [2/12/2008] to end their devastating, three-month
strike that brought the entertainment industry to a standstill.
The Editor says...
It is very difficult to feel sorry for the unionized writers. These are the people who develop such
great products as the TV series based on the Geico cavemen, and a great number of other shows whose
"pilot" episodes weren't good enough to put on the air even once. When you look at the worthless
pap on prime-time television, you have to wonder if that's the best they can do. If it is,
our country would be better off if the writers stayed out on strike forever!
Think about it. How many movies and TV shows about time travel, space wars, talking animals, talking babies,
pirates, foul-mouthed cartoon characters, dysfunctional families and children-as-super-heroes can you stand?
Not to mention the sappy, predictable romantic films ("chick flicks"), or the unreal reality shows, or the
cheap and insipid programs stitched together from other people's video clips,
like America's Wackiest Dash-cam Videos? Being a Hollywood writer
requires less talent than the writers would have you believe. It is only natural that they
band together in unions, and even then, the writers' union would be worthless without the support
of the other labor unions and the on-camera talent.
HDTV is a threat to Canadian culture,
critics warn. Bart Beaty and Rebecca Sullivan argue that while HDTV is offered as part of an
expanded choice for consumers, the selection of programming using digital over analog technologies is almost
exclusively American. "If you were to ask most Canadians what's wrong with Canadian TV, they wouldn't
say 'image quality,'" said Beaty, co-author with Sullivan of the newly published book Canadian Television
Today, in a statement Thursday [11/23/2006].
Americans see media aiding moral
decline. Most Americans think culture is becoming more immoral, and they view the
media — both entertainment and news — as prime culprits, according to a new survey.
American Pop
Culture: Degeneracy On Parade. With television, movies, the Internet and even local stores
and markets acting as conveyers of debauchery, it seems there is no escape. Once confined to the margins
of society, depravity has now become mainstream. Those who mistakenly thought television shows geared
toward families, such as "American Idol" and its dance version "So You Think You Can Dance," were a safe bet,
might want to think again.
Turn the channel?
Are you kidding? All information is not equal. You would think we would know that by now,
but all education is not equal either. In fact, it seems like our modern education prepares us more to
be consumers than connoisseurs of information. A connoisseur of wine can tell the difference between
an exquisite wine and a merely good one.
The Gratingest Generation. Does it ever
occur to media chatterboxes that people watch tennis because they want to see tennis, not hear about some
celebrity's latest movie or TV series? If those who lived during World War II were "the greatest
generation," this must be the gratingest generation. It's not just the constant meaningless chatter
that grates. There is the incessant self-dramatization.
Media easily influenced.
In between wars and terrorist attacks and election nights, reporters have very little to actually
report. … Seasoned reporters make a good living sitting back and waiting to be pitched on the day's
possible stories, and they grow accustomed to the spoon-feeding. Add to this natural human inclination
toward laziness most political reporters' left-leaning political ideas, and you get the current state of
political journalism.
Inventor of TV Remote Control Dies at
Age 93. Robert Adler, who won an Emmy Award along with fellow engineer Eugene Polley for the
device that made couch potatoship possible, died Thursday [2/15/2007] of heart failure at a Boise nursing
home at 93, Zenith Electronics Corp. said Friday. In his six-decade career with Zenith, Adler was a
prolific inventor, earning more than 180 U.S. patents. He was best known for his 1956 Zenith Space
Command remote control, which helped make TV a truly sedentary pastime.
What
are you laughing at? In 1953, Charles Douglass invented a machine called the "laff box," which we
commonly refer to today as the "laugh track," ushering in a new era of comedy on television.
Counterculturalist Paul Krassner once called the laugh track "the epitome of televised hypnotic suggestion."
More TVs Than People in Average
Home. The average American home now has more television sets than people. That threshold
was crossed within the past two years, according to Nielsen Media Research. There are 2.73 TV sets
in the typical home and 2.55 people, the researchers said. With televisions now on buses, elevators
and in airport lobbies, that development may have as much to do with TV's ubiquity as an appliance as it does
conspicuous consumption. The popularity of flat-screen TVs now make it easy to put sets where they
haven't been before.
Beating
back the TV takeover: The typical household accommodates only 2.55 people, but 2.73
televisions. An astonishing 50% of all homes boast three or more TV's, and only 19% contain
just one. In 1975, by contrast 57% of households owned only one television, and only 11% contained
three or more.
Just Say "Off".
I was trained at a young age to worship television. It was the center of our home, akin to a shrine.
From within the wooden box, a powerful force seemed to pull our small family of three toward it. Our day
didn't begin before the set was turned on, and no one went to bed until it was turned off. The compelling
need to constantly watch left me laying on the floor for hours, leaning first on one arm, then the other, until
my elbows formed nearly permanent impressions of broadloom fibers. Rather than be interrupted by meals,
we simply adapted by eating on wobbly trays.
TV Addiction Quiz: Do you eat
dinner while watching TV? Can you turn off the TV now, right now, and leave it off
for three days? Do you flip mindlessly through the channels to find something good?
Do you need TV to unwind or fall asleep after a hard day? Do you need TV to wake you up
in the morning? Do you watch TV more than you talk to your family?
Television: opiate of the masses.
The signs of addiction are all around us. The average American watches over four hours of television
every day, and 49% of those continue to watch despite admitting to doing it excessively. These are the
classic indicators of an addict in denial: addicts know they're doing harm to themselves, but continue
to use the drug regardless.
The Failure of Technology: When
Jerry Mander suggested in his book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, published in 1978,
that television was not reformable no matter who controlled the medium, it represented the first time
anyone had dared suggest that we do away with television altogether. Mander argued that television is
visual intoxicant that entrances the viewer into a hypnotic state and thereby replaces other forms of
knowledge with the imagery of its programmers. It infuses young children with high-tech, high-speed
expectations of life, so that a walk in nature would likely seem interminably boring.
The Editor says...
Yes, he's right so far, but as the interview goes on, you'll find that Mander is opposed to
all forms of "high tech", just like the Unabomber. And if you look around the web site where
this article appears, you'll see that it's strictly for left-wing "activists" and
anti-capitalist troublemakers.
TV or Not TV? Not!
Television emerged as a mass medium in the 1950s and quickly came to occupy a key role in an orchestrated
campaign to eradicate conventional middle-class morals and culture.
Turn
Them Off — Turn Them All Off. Mitch Altman's invention is
called TV–B–Gone. It
fits snugly in the palm, a near-weightless lump of black plastic. Its shape vaguely
suggests the Batman logo. A tiny diode rests on the very tip of Batman's head,
between his pointy bat ears. Press a button and from this diode a
beam of invisible light escapes that can turn off any television — any
television — within a radius of 45 feet.
Morning Show
Retreat: Almost half a million fewer women tuned into the big three morning shows this season
compared to last. And though that number may not be devastating to ABC, CBS, and NBC just yet, the
10 percent drop off is making networks and their advertisers (a good portion of whom have their
revenues tied up in moms' purse strings) nervous.
TV media finally feeling
print media's pain. What happened this week at KPIX, where 15 of about 250 station employees were
laid off, is both an old and a new story. Old in that it — and other CBS-owned and -operated
stations from Chicago to Dallas — weren't making enough profit, so salaries were shed. And new
in that local TV stations are finally feeling the impact of the changing ways people consume media.
CBS Moves Ahead With
Layoffs in News. News operations at CBS stations in several cities started a series of job cuts
this week even as the CBS News network moved ahead with plans to lay off about 1 percent of its nearly
1,200 employees. Over the last several days, layoffs were ordered at local stations that CBS owns,
including ones in New York, Chicago, Boston and San Francisco. Dana McClintock, a spokesman for CBS,
said the actions at the network and the local stations were not related.
Dead Air: Why CBS should shutter its news division.
To judge by the ads, the most loyal adherents to CBS' quasi-journalistic programming are impotent and
incontinent. It so happens that they share these afflictions with the network's actual news division.
… Most weeks, the perfectly decent Bob Schieffer, who will retire after the 2009 inauguration, sees
Face the Nation to a finish as the third-rated Sunday show. And the only thing worse than the
Nielsen numbers is the product.
FCC Auction Rules Offer Easy Escape.
Although the rules call for the winner of a 22 MHz block of the coveted spectrum to allow any phone, device,
or application to work within that group of frequencies, they also hedge, stating this network neutrality requirement
is "subject to certain reasonable network management conditions that allow the licensee to protect the network
from harm." "Reasonable" is delightfully elastic.
Bad Data & Broken
Databases at the FCC. How does one determine the sex or ethnicity of a corporation? Clear
Channel Communications — one of the nation's largest owners of radio stations — has
issued nearly 500 million shares of stock. Has Clear Channel polled every share holder about their
race or gender? It's doubtful. It's also doubtful that any method of determining the race and
gender of the owners of corporate stations could ever be done in a way that's meaningful or anything close
to a basis for sound public policy.
Switch
off TV and switch on your memory. Turning off the television, picking up a crossword and eating
more fish could be the key to a better memory, an Australian survey has found. Those who took part in
the test were asked to fill in a survey on a range of habits, such as alcohol consumption, television viewing
and reading habits. The results found no differences between men and women, with the same scores for
both groups on all the tasks. But it found television viewing had the main impact on results.
Too much TV for
tots. Many parents have created homes where the TV is a nearly constant presence, all around
the house. Almost half the children (43 percent) aged 4 to 6 have a TV in their
bedroom. Even more shocking, there's an idiot box in 19 percent of the rooms with
babies one year or younger.
A new study reveals the obvious: TV Linked to Kids'
Short Attention Spans. Because the brain of a newborn develops rapidly
throughout its first several years of life, researchers from the University of Washington
and Seattle-area mental health professionals theorized that early exposure to TV might
affect brain development.
The Media
is the Politics. In a random telephone survey of 1,000 parents of children ages two months to
2 years in Washington state and Minnesota, parents said they let their babies watch television for "fun
and education." Few of them admit they use the tube as an electronic babysitter. In other studies,
doctors suggest that babies who watch television experience changes in their brain development at a time when
they should be learning to talk through association with the larger of their species.
TV and Tykes Don't
Mix. Kids aren't just gravitating to the tube; the one-eyed monster is being used as a babysitter
by parents who think they're too busy for them and by folks who see giving a child his own tube as a way of
allowing parents to gorge on TV themselves. … This is so sad, because TV makes kids fatter and dumber.
Babies and TV Screens Don't
Mix. By the time children are two years old, 90 percent are spending two or three hours a day in
front of a screen. According to the article in TIME, "…the research team found that with every
hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants learned six to eight fewer new vocabulary words
than babies who never watched the videos.
TV Really Might Cause Autism. Today, Cornell
University researchers are reporting what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between
autism rates and television watching by children under the age of 3. The researchers studied
autism incidence in California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington state. They found that as cable
television became common in California and Pennsylvania beginning around 1980, childhood autism rose more
in the counties that had cable than in the counties that did not.
Indecent Proposal: End, don't mend, TV content
regulation. Broadcast spectrum is a "national resource" only because the government insisted on
nationalizing it. There's no reason in principle why the right to transmit at a certain frequency in a
certain area could not be treated the same way as the right to graze cattle or build a skyscraper on a
particular piece of land. Broadcast licenses already are de facto property, bought and sold along
with stations, except that the Federal Communications Commission occasionally clobbers broadcasters with
fines if it does not like what they air.
The New Media
Elites: It has become a staple of Sunday newspapers, television talk shows,
and late-night news programs: the cautionary tale about the Internet turning America's
youth into a generation of socially inept zombies, plugged in but tuned out, incapable of any
conversation longer than an instant message, and headed for a sedentary life of weight gain,
eye strain, and information overload. But if anyone is in danger from the growing power
of the Internet … it is not America's youth but the old media themselves.
Do not adjust your
set: TV is about to blow apart. The internet, in the television industry as in many others, is both the
infection and the cure. It will do to television what it has done to journalism: make everyone a producer and
everyone a potential star. … I don't know about you, but I rarely leave my evening viewing to chance or to programmers
any more. It's planned and recorded in advance. And even if I watch live I delay starting for 10 minutes so
I can zip past the advertisements.
Turn
that confounded thing off. I have read the bumper stickers saying "Kill Your TV" and know
the reasons why you should. I realized that TV was creeping into my psyche: the violent and
overtly sexual shows, penetrating ads, the put-down humour, the time-draining, mind-numbing
influence. Most of all, it was hurting my relationship with my husband, my best friend.
A Low-Water
Mark for Broadcast TV Viewing. TV viewers must have taken to the beach: It was the least-watched
week in recorded history for the four biggest broadcast networks.
Don't Expect
Hollywood to Learn from Academy Awards Broadcast Bomb. So Sunday's Oscar™ broadcast was,
underwhelmingly, a television ratings bomb. Not even the allure of Tinseltown's beautiful people
walking down the red carpet in free gowns and borrowed jewels could tempt Americans to tune into what's
known as the biggest self-congratulatory backslapping event in the history of mankind.
The CEO of
silliness. The late Steve Allen used cite a delicious analogy to describe why the public airwaves
should be kept free from offensive content. If a stranger walked into your house, stood before your
children in the living room, and started stripping and cursing, would you feel their innocence had been
violated? Why then, he'd ask, should TV networks be allowed to do the same, using the airwaves owned by
those very parents?
Americans will devote
half their lives to forms of media next year. In 2000, Americans each spent an average of 3,333
hours consuming media — and most of that time (1,467 hours) was spent in front of the TV, according to Veronis
Suhler Stevenson, a media-oriented money management company that supplied much of the media data used in the
report. Next year, Americans will spend 3,518 hours with their beloved media, including 1,555 in front of the
TV, says Veronis Suhler Stevenson. That means the average American will spend roughly 146 days, or five
months, consuming media.
In every
corner, a television set. Television ownership used to be an accepted indicator of wealth and
social class: the higher the number of sets in a neighbourhood, the better off the residents. No
longer. Indeed, some of the poorest corners of Britain now have the highest ownership rates. … Find
a household with no television and it is likely to be a sign less of poverty than of middle-class sensibilities.
Medic, Marcus Welby, Dr. Kildare,
Medical Center, Ben Casey, The Doctors, General Hospital, St. Elsewhere,
M*A*S*H, AfterMASH, Emergency, The Nurses, ER, Chicago Hope, House, Grey's Anatomy ... TV, heal
thyself. What is it with you people and medical shows? How is it that I and every other
normal human being hates going to the hospital even if it's just to bring candy and flowers to someone who has
to be there, but when it comes to TV, you can't seem to get your fill of smocks and surgical masks?
Unanswered TV questions. Sure, I watch TV for
entertainment, but sometimes it's all I can do not to put a foot through the screen in frustration. Many
reasons for that (the general quality of shows these days, Hollywood's obsession with wealth), but the shows
also invite weird plot-related irritation with their UQs — Unanswered Questions. Every show
has one or more, questions that normal people would ask, but that would ruin the entire plot
of a show if they were actually voiced.
Rumors of Broadcast TV's Death Are
Premature. Financial analyst Steve Kamman has said that, with the advent of digital
video recorders and video-on-demand, there will no longer be any demand for broadcast
television. … [However] Watching television is a passive activity. To be
entertained, you don't have to do much more than turn on the TV and surf until something
good comes up. If there were no channels to surf, only thousands of programs you
could call up on demand, how would you know what to watch?
[What an odd question. If there were no TV stations, how (and why) would you stay in the habit of
watching TV?]
FCC's
Emergency Alert System Coming to Your Cell Phone Soon. The Emergency
Alert System (EAS) has "fallen into disarray and needs major reform," concluded FCC
Chairman Michael Powell recently as he announced agency plans to revamp the system,
according to a report in Broadcasting and Cable.
Editorial Comment:
It was the FCC that cooked up the current EAS system, and now, after they have added
more and more uses for it, now it has "fallen into disarray". The new
modernized version will be able to turn your TV or radio on, if it isn't
already. Why not just make it illegal to turn the TV off? If
these people have their way, we'll all have Orwellian Telescreens in our homes.
Why cable 'a la carte' won't
roll. Americans love channel surfing, and many spend their evenings flipping through the
vast ocean of inexpensive programming available through cable television packages. But if
the Federal Communications Commission has its way, that value-priced ocean could be reduced to
an expensive puddle.
Cable
choice now. Increasing numbers of public policy organizations, political leaders,
and even telecommunications companies are endorsing the very simple concept that consumers should
take and pay for only that which they want on cable television, rather than having to continue
subsidizing programming they find offensive or just plain lousy.
Man
admits killing the cable guy. A Gary [Indiana] man became so enraged when he learned his TV
wouldn't readily accept his newly installed cable, he shot and killed the cable guy. Fransuah Mathews
admitted Thursday he fatally shot a man installing cable for him to repay a debt when Mathews realized
his TV was not cable ready.
Americans are Eager to Know about
Economics, Study Says. Television, by far the most popular conduit for those seeking
economic knowledge, leaves its viewers with below-average knowledge. But television viewers
outperform those who turn to political leaders, friends, relatives, or civic or religious leaders
as their primary source of information, according to Blinder and Krueger.
NBC's
on-air war on the FCC. Calling this "news" opens a big profanity loophole. Even worse is the
commission's creation of a provision for the networks themselves to determine what fits this "news" definition.
What's next?
TV Profanity Will Go Before Appeals Judges. Fox
and CBS's First Amendment challenge to regulations against on-air profanity could either open the way to more
cursing on network television or encourage broadcasters to play it safer with tamer programming.
Note: This article is replete with profanity. The words you can never say on TV, except when you
can: It's obvious by now that the FCC makes up the rules for acceptable speech as it goes
along. In the paradigmatic example of broadcast indecency, Carlin's monologue about "the words you
couldn't say on the public airwaves," there's no question that the expletives were "integral" to the routine,
which was partly about the very censorship to which it became subject.
Does Profanity
Reign Supreme? The Supreme Court has taken up the case of FCC vs. Fox Television Stations, the bizarre
case in which Fox and other broadcast TV networks have argued that "fleeting" profanities are mere accidents that
should not be punished with fines. While it's laudable that the nation's top court would take up the matter,
it's beyond outrageous that what Hollywood really wants — and, in a cowardly way, is refusing to declare
publicly — is the "right" to bombard your living room, and your children, with obscenities.
The Editor says...
It is fairly easy for a TV network to include a ten-second delay into any "live" program, in order to
catch and filter out profanity before it gets on the air. With that technology available (and indeed, already
installed), nothing gets on the air accidentally. At least not at the network level. So-called "fleeting"
profanity is being justified and defended for one reason: to open the door for more frequent, intentional and offensive
outbursts, and eventually normalize every imaginable sort of corrupt communication. Once again I remind
you, this kind of incrementalism only goes in one direction.
Fox
Refuses To Pay FCC Indecency Fine. In an unusually aggressive step, Fox Broadcasting yesterday
refused to pay a $91,000 indecency fine levied by the Federal Communications Commission for an episode of a
long-canceled reality television show, even as the network fights two other indecency fines in the Supreme
Court. The FCC proposed fining all 169 Fox-owned and affiliate stations a total of $1.2 million in
2004 for airing a 2003 episode of "Married by America," which featured digitally obscured nudity and
whipped-cream-covered strippers.
Stop Taxpayer Subsidies for all
Broadcasters! As another conservative journalist is exposed on the payroll of the Bush Administration,
the nation's leading media watchdog, Accuracy in Media (AIM), called on public television and radio to give up their
$400 million in taxpayer subsidies. AIM Editor Cliff Kincaid says that it is obvious that the liberal media
are only against taxpayer subsidies for journalists when they are conservative.
The Disappearing
Anchor 'Man'. Turn on your TV for the nightly newscast and you're now more
than likely to see a woman on the screen — whether it's Katie Couric, Elizabeth
Vargas or the woman delivering your local news.
[Why do you suppose that is? It is partly because TV stations are under pressure to hire
women and minorities, but it is also because people have become accustomed to women as figures
of authority, thus credible bearers of serious news. Forty years ago it wasn't that way.]
The Struggle for Control of the
Media: One of the key, though underestimated, ways in which America differs from other Western
democracies is that it lacks a partisan media system. By this, I mean a complete panoply of openly
partisan outlets in every form of media. It has this today only on the Internet, and is
acquiring it on television.
Network TV Lacks Diversity, NAACP
Says. Nearly a decade after the NAACP condemned a "virtual whiteout" in broadcast TV, the civil
rights group said major networks have stalled in their efforts to further ethnic diversity on-screen and off.
Television shows of the future could be even less inclusive because of a failure to cultivate young minority
stars and to bring minorities into decision-making positions, NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous
said.
Television
Statistics: According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than
four hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In
a 65-year life, that person will have spent nine years glued to the tube.
It's about time to clean
up our act. [The FCC] recently released a report that said Congress
has the authority to keep programs with violent content from being shown during hours when children could view
them. Ha. That is laughable. Imagine Congress or any other lawmaking body in this country
actually trying to regulate social behavior in an effort to give us a healthier climate to live in! No,
it won't happen because the self-centered majority won't let it happen.
Toned-down
awards shows: The "wardrobe malfunction" that launched a national outpouring
of rage against televised soft-porn slime continues to reap great benefits for
the forces of reason, reticence and decency on television.
Judges vs. the
FCC: The federal judges who ruled against the FCC suggested the agency's rulings were "arbitrary
and capricious." But is there anything more arbitrary and capricious than an egotistical celebrity
dropping the F-bomb on national TV? Or the network refusing to administer a tiny delay? Pardon me
if I can't imagine Thomas Jefferson and Co. pledging their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor for the
valiant cause of transmitting the potty mouths of washed-up pop singers and spoiled-rotten mall princesses
into millions of American households.
The Editor says...
When you turn on a television, you know exactly what you're getting into. When someone curses
on television, or exposes herself (or himself), or sets a bad example for your kids, it gets into your
home only because you didn't turn off the television. If it happens more than once, it is only
because you didn't get rid of your television.
Reed Irvine,
R.I.P.. In its infancy, network television news was a rip-and-read enterprise,
15 quick minutes of wire service copy. But as TV news divisions recognized their own
political power, they began actively to steer a national audience toward a political worldview
of their liking. Sometimes it was as simple as covering something, or refusing to
cover something.
Even as Viewers Tune Out, BBC Bosses
Get £3.7 Million. The BBC paid its top managers £3.7 million in
salary and bonuses last year despite losing more than half a million television viewers to rival
digital channels and the internet, according to the corporation's annual report.
Media bias regarding gun
control: Today, the right to own a gun is under assault like never before. Every
time a firearm is used in a high-profile crime, calls for stricter gun regulation — even
outright prohibition — are pounded into us by a press that has taken sides. In
fact, when it comes to guns, journalists have clearly made up their minds. According to a
recent study, television news stories calling for stricter gun laws outnumbered newscasts opposing
such laws by a ratio of ten to one. In other words, we are
hearing only one side of the story.
Violence and Promiscuity Set the Stage for Television's
Moral Collapse. Long hailed as the cheapest form of family entertainment, television has cost us our
imagination, our conversation, and our children's innocence. As Dr. George Gerbner puts it, "The roles [young
people] grow into are no longer home-made, hand-crafted, and community inspired." Instead, they are developing
a worldview based on television and not their own experience.
The Dumbing Down Of Politics:
[Scroll down] The [LA] Times noted that Barack Obama, during a tight schedule that had him shuttling between New
York and Washington last Thursday, "managed to squeeze in time to visit an influential national television
program: 'The Tyra Banks Show.'" "During the hourlong show," the Times said, "the supermodel turned
TV personality challenged her guest to a game of pickup basketball and had him look in a crystal ball to divine
his future."
The Editor says...
To describe the Tyra Banks show as "an influential national television program" is either a gross
distortion or a sad commentary on the number of malleable dupes who watch it. Tyra seems to have
forgotten that she got where she is based entirely on her gender and her race, even as she preaches that all
women and blacks are victims of discrimination. The show is an hour of meaningless pap that exists only
to fill the gaps between commercial breaks.
Local TV Stations Face a Fuzzy Future.
Lisa Howfield, general manager of KVBC, the NBC affiliate here, watched last year as the broadcast-television business began
to shrink. She started cutting. She combined departments. She made do with old equipment, and did away with
luxuries like yearly sales getaways. In December and January, she laid off 15 employees, or 6% of her staff.
After the weatherman left last month, one of the morning news anchors took on both jobs. "It's like a bad roller-coaster
ride," says Ms. Howfield. Her station's full-day viewership is down 7.7% this TV season from the same period last
year, according to Nielsen Co., and Ms. Howfield expects her ad revenue in 2009 will be down 30% from 2008.
The Editor says...
Hey Lisa! The advertising revenue is down because people don't like the meaningless drivel that you present in prime
time. Nor do they enjoy sitting through a three-minute commercial break that is packed with insipid spots and self-aggrandizing
promotional ads for shows they aren't interested in watching. Your "news anchors" are essentially reading the morning
newspaper in front of a camera. (In radio, "rip and read" has been a minimum wage job for 40 years.) How
much of your local news coverage is anything more than filler between the commercials? Who cares if there was a car
wreck on the other side of town last night, or if an airplane landed with one wheel up, or if a five-year-old kid in Wisconsin
saved his grandma by calling 9-1-1? Put something worthwhile on the air, and you won't have any difficulty attracting
viewers and advertisers. If you really want to perform a public service, sign the station off, surrender the license,
and board it up.
Broadcast TV Faces
Struggle to Stay Viable. CBS ... is having a better year in prime time than any other network. And
yet, as at the other networks, profits have declined sharply at CBS. For decades, the big three, now big four,
networks all had the same game plan: spend many millions to develop and produce scripted shows aimed at a mass
audience and national advertisers, with a shelf life of years or decades as reruns in syndication. But that
model ... no longer appears viable.
WTVH
Ends News Operation. WTVH-TV (Channel 5), the first television station in Syracuse, lost its
independent newsroom Monday after 60 years. The station brought news legend Ron Curtis to living
rooms for four decades, but has suffered since then in the race for viewers and advertising dollars.
About 40 Channel 5 employees were fired on the spot.
The British method:
Television in England is apparently non-commercial, at least on some channels, but there is an annual license
required for a TV receiver.
Colour
TV licence goes up to £142.50. Black-and-white only licences will go up by £1 from
£47 to £48, it was confirmed today. The current cost of a basic colour TV licence is
£139.50.
License
fee police may target you for watching TV on Net. Viewers who watch television only through their
computers could be forced to pay the licence fee, it has been revealed. Currently, those who solely use
catch-up services, such as the BBC's iPlayer, do not need to pay the annual £139.50 charge. But a law
could be introduced to change this, amid growing evidence that more television viewers are migrating online.
Blow
for TV licence dodgers as detector vans go undercover. TV detector vans have gone undercover in a
controversial move to catch those watching without a licence. The latest vehicles are unmarked to make them
indistinguishable from those driven by 'white van man' as they cruise the streets — although they will
probably be going a little slower.
The Editor says...
I don't get it. If the British government is so concerned about people watching television without
paying for such a great privilege, why aren't the TV signals encrypted? Wouldn't that be easier than
having someone drive all over the country looking for unauthorized receivers?
The British TV receiver tax could be easily implemented in the U.S. Here's how: Once the
television stations in the United States have been converted over to digital transmitters, it would
be a relatively simple matter for the FCC to order all of them encrypted and then charge the viewers
for the keys to unlock the once-free signals. The mechanism for subscription TV is already a part
of the digital transmission protocol: It's called "conditional
access." Lookitup.
In Sweden: Outrage over licence fee demand for CCTV.
Swedish business owners are up in arms over a recent push by the country's television licencing bureau to
collect fees from companies using surveillance cameras. "It's crazy, the screens aren't used for
watching TV," said Dick Malmlund, head of security for the Swedish Trade Federation (Svensk Handel), to the
Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper.
In Ads, 1 Out of 5 Stats Is
Bogus* A downward-spiraling economy means less spending money, so food makers increasingly
are running ads aimed at grabbing the other guy's share of the (pizza) pie — or burger, or
soup can. And their advertising arsenal includes numbers — based on their market
research, often controversial and sometimes top-secret.
High-wrinkle TV. They mandated the
nation to transition to digital television, yet some members of Congress may be having trouble making the change
themselves. Makeup artists who worked both the National Republican and Democratic conventions, the presidential
debates and in the U.S. Capitol say most lawmakers are unprepared for the toll that high-definition television is
taking on their appearances — and that that could translate into lost voters in the 2010 elections.
California To Ban TV: But Not For a Good Reason.
Why is the California Energy Commission (CEC), a Gov. Jerry Brown creation, wanting to ban television
sets? Well, it seems that a honking 48-inch plasma screen, that bright symbol of the bygone days of
conspicuous consumption and purveyor of drooling vacuity, uses too much electricity, and electricity
production makes too much greenhouse gas emissions (at least in America, where half of our electricity
comes from coal — in France, a plasma screen would emit nary a CO2 molecule as the TVs there
are nuclear powered).
California Proposes Ban on Energy-Hogging
HDTVs Starting in 2011. The California Energy Commission is proceeding with a proposal this
summer to ban the sale of TV sets that did not meet new efficiency standards when they are turned on and
displaying a picture — a measure of power consumption that is not currently regulated at all.
Are commercial breaks louder than TV programs?
Yes and no. The peak audio level is the same, but the average level is usually higher, simply because
most advertisers have only 30 seconds to make their point and pitch their product. Most movies,
soap operas, and dramatic productions have long quiet scenes -- especially in the last few seconds
before a commercial break. Comedy shows are usually augmented with canned laughter and applause, so the
viewers don't notice much contrast in loudness when the commercial break begins.
Bill seeks to
turn down sound on TV ads. Fed up with TV ads so loud that they send viewers scrambling to hit
mute on their remotes, a Bay Area lawmaker is pushing a new bill that would force federal regulators to ratchet
down the volume of commercials. The proposal was introduced this week by Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto,
and it isn't winning her any friends in the broadcasting or advertising industries. But Eshoo's House
colleagues are warming to the idea, which could address a daily annoyance for millions of TV viewers.
I sent a message to the writer of the article above, to say...
Over-the-air TV stations already have equipment that regulates the peak audio level of everything that goes
into their transmitters. Soap operas, commercials, and local news programs are all treated the same way,
and variations in audio levels (from one second to the next) are surprisingly small.
To impose new regulations on the subjective loudness of commercials, and keep those audio levels lower than
the surrounding program material, the broadcasters would have to artificially boost the volume on program
segments that are not necessarily intended to be loud, and actively suppress the effectiveness of commercials.
It is the commercials, after all, that pay the bills at a TV station, and I'd hate to be a TV advertising
salesperson having to explain to a client that his spots will be intentionally half-muted.
Twenty years ago I noticed that the video levels are just as different as the audio levels. Soap operas
(a/k/a daytime dramas) are usually very dark, while the interspersed soap commercials are bright. This
is still true today. Since many soap operas are produced by Proctor and Gamble, this should come as no
surprise.
Rep. Anna Eshoo may or may not have a good idea, but its implementation would require a new set of unambiguous
standards for the measurement of average loudness, and a long discussion about how much reduction is enough,
and whether it would be just as annoying and tiresome for a movie to have a constantly loud sound track.
I think we should leave things the way they are, and "let the market decide" if it's really that big a
problem. The viewers have plenty of options available, including
the POWER OFF button.
Update: Here's some good news: Loud TV ads may be near an
end. Under a proposal to be taken up Thursday [6/10/2009], the Federal Communications Commission
would squelch ad volumes to the average decibels of the TV show during which they appear. Currently,
TV ads can't be louder than the loudest peak in a show, said David Perry, the chairman of the broadcast
production committee of the American Association of Advertising Agencies in New York. Ads often
seem louder to viewers, he added, because a program's volume peak rarely comes just before an ad.
The Editor says...
If this becomes law, TV stations will have the incentive to compress audio levels on all programs,
so TV stations will sound like AM radio stations.
The United States of Advertising.
America is, I think, the only country in the world which permits advertising of drugs which are available only through your
doctor. The insidious message is simple; if your doctor is not offering you this drug, maybe you should be asking for
it. …The whole point of [prescription drugs] is that it is not considered safe to let us simply buy them over the
counter. They are so strong or so habit forming that it is up to the doctor to decide that we really need them.
Advertising subtly changes that relationship….
Why TV Ads Are a
Waste of Money: To the extent that TV ads have ever had an impact in a general election, that
influence has been sharply diminished by the Internet and TiVo Ages. Viewers now receive their
information in ways that minimize their contact with commercials. Sure, advertisers still flock to
television. But effective product commercials these days run far more often and strategically than do
political ads, and production-value-wise, they are light years ahead of anything the candidates ever
put out.
Warning:
Products Ahead. Hide the children: Commercial products are visible on network television.
That's the urgent message from a clatch of public interest groups who wrote to the Federal Communications Commission
last week demanding an end to "advertainment." … This conspiratorial view of advertising goes back to Vance
Packard and the "Hidden Persuaders," the book unmasking the supposed media manipulation of the 1950s.
TV and Test Scores
Don't Mix. A new study finds that children who have TV sets in their bedrooms
score lower on school tests than those who don't, according to the New York Times. … The
issue may have more to do with parental control. Parents may not be aware if their
children are up all night watching television, or if they are watching inappropriate
programming.
Networks Plan on Blaspheming
God — Most Shocking TV Season Ever: ABC, CBS and NBC are considering dropping many of the
few remaining standards on network prime-time TV programs — and will likely allow expletives and
four-letter words never spoken before on broadcast TV.
Violence on Prime
Time Broadcast TV. Concerns about the impact of television violence on society are almost as old
as the medium itself. As early as 1952, the United States House of Representatives was holding hearings
to explore the impact of television violence and concluded that the "television broadcast industry was a
perpetrator and a deliverer of violence."
Foul Language on
Prime Time Network TV. The connection between media violence and real life violence has been well
documented. The consensus of the scientific and mental health communities is that children are profoundly
influenced by the violent images they see on television and in films. Constant exposure to media violence
can result in aggressive, anti-social behavior, and even violent outbursts.
Sex Loses its
Appeal. For years conventional wisdom in Hollywood has been that "sex sells," and the more, the
better. That mantra has been reflected in increasingly frequent and increasingly graphic depictions of
sex on television. But does sex really attract more viewers? In recent years, countless surveys
have shown that not only are parents increasingly concerned about how exposure to sexual content is affecting
their children, but even adults are turned-off by the rampant sex on TV.
This might be a case of over-analysis... The Use of Offensive Language by
Men and Women in Prime Time Television Entertainment. A content analysis examined prime-time
television entertainment programs aired on 7 broadcast networks during the 2001 season. Profanity use
within inter-sex and intra-sex interactions was explored. Swearing occurred most often in man-to-man
interactions, followed by women-to-men. Men and women tended to use mild curse words more when talking
to the opposite sex. Unmarried women more often directed expletives at both men and women; unmarried men
cursed more at other men. Offensive language was most often met by a neutral response; men and women were
equally likely to respond positively and negatively to cursing. Men in feature roles, as compared to
minor roles, used more profanity when speaking to men and women.
The Disappearing Family Hour
The Toxic Tube Made Them Do It. A
recent study published in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Pediatric Association, points to a
strong link between [teen-targeted television] and teen pregnancy. ... Dr. Nancy Snyderman noted on
NBC's Today that 80 percent of entertainment programs targeting teens contain sexual themes.
Turn
off, tune out, cancel the cable. There's a brand-new poll out called "American Attitudes on Religion,
Moral Values and Hollywood." Its main findings, according to a press release, are that a majority of Americans
(61 percent) believes that their religious values are "under attack." A similar majority (59 percent)
believes the people who run TV and the movies "do not share the religious and moral values of most Americans."
If that's all I told you about the poll, you might have assumed it was commissioned by Focus on the Family or a
similar Christian "family values" group and that its leadership was feeling validated by the findings. In fact,
its sponsor is the Anti-Defamation League. And as a Jewish defense organization, the ADL is worried.
Americans
feel religious values attacked. A majority of the American people believes that religious values
are "under attack," and that Hollywood does not share the religious and moral values of most Americans, according
to a survey issued Sunday by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). ... The poll also found that 59% of Americans
agree that "the people who run the TV networks and the major movie studios do not share the religious and
moral values of most Americans."
No cussin' allowed. The federal law known as
the indecency ban proscribes the utterance of "any obscene, indecent or profane language" over the airwaves.
Congress has set the enforcement times between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., and authorized fines, license revocations
and denials of license renewals as possible punishments for infractions.
Hollywood's
Ridiculous Lawyers. When Justice Stevens asked if there were changes in community standards over
the last 30 years, if society had grown more tolerant of curse words, Carter Phillips, the profanity-favoring
attorney for Fox, proclaimed: "I believe that society is significantly more tolerant of these words today
than it was 30 years ago." Justice Scalia replied: "Do you think your clients have had
anything to do with that?" The answer is, of course, self-evident. There is no greater cultural
influence on impressionable youth than the entertainment industry.
Racy TV shows linked to higher
teenage pregnancy rates. Groundbreaking research suggests that pregnancy rates are much
higher among teens who watch a lot of TV with sexual dialogue and behavior than among those who have
tamer viewing tastes. "Sex and the City" ... was one of the shows used in the research.
The
Frustrated Family Hour. Since 2000-2001, violent content during the family hour has increased
52 percent. Sexual content is up 22 percent. Foul language is down 25 percent
since 2000-2001. But wait. The decrease is almost entirely due to the drop in less objectionable
words…. The major curse words have hardly declined at all, just 3 percent.
The Editor says...
Television (and radio, for that matter) can only provide inexpensive family entertainment in a country where
either (a) the producers of broadcast programs have the self-control and common decency to present only
G-rated shows and (b) the viewing public tolerates only the most benign material. These conditions
have not been met in the U.S. since the 1960's. There is no "Family Hour." Prime-time television,
with rare exceptions, is a cesspool of tawdry and salacious pap that would have been considered "unfit for
broadcast" as recently as the 1970s.
The Coax Straightjacket: Stopping Cable Copy-Protection
Abuse. The Supreme Court "Betamax" decision decades ago established the fair use rights of consumers to
make copies of television programs, and save them on videocassettes. But with the demise of VHS, the newly ascendant
technology is Digital Video Recorders (DVRs), such as the TiVo and its various cruder generic cousins (the latter typically
cable company supplied).
Bad news for WFAA: Senate nullifies FCC rule
on media ownership. The Senate voted Thursday night to nullify a Federal Communications Commission
rule that allows media firms to own a newspaper and a television station in the same market. The unusual
"resolution of disapproval," sponsored by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and 24 other senators, was approved by
a voice vote.
TV
commercials can literally be a pain, German experts say. If you have mysterious back pains which
your doctor cannot explain, the cause may be partly due to watching TV commercials about pain-relief medication,
according to findings of a revolutionary new study in Germany. The German researchers said incidence of
back pain among people living behind the Berlin Wall increased dramatically after German unification as East
Germans became inundated by West German commercial television networks.
Wake-up
call to a.m. news: moms tuning out. Several years ago, the 34-year-old mother of three
stopped watching the morning shows. After getting TiVo, she had no patience to sit through multiple
commercial breaks during a live newscast. On top of that, the segments began to seem more and more
frivolous. "Watching morning television for me is the equivalent of reading People magazine in the
dentist's office," said Lauck, who writes for websites from her home in Santa Rosa, Calif. "They don't
have anything new or particularly relevant to my life. It seems like a lot of fluff. I feel like
I can get information faster and cleaner on the Internet."
Reporting from inside the media vacuum.
With industry-wide belt-tightening, news organizations are dispatching fewer reporters to the trail, and
[Mark] Halperin added that "some major candidates, some for whole days, don't have reporters from major news
organizations with them." Predictably, lower-tier candidates have only a handful of reporters with them
at this point.
US
news chiefs warn of evening TV news demise. Paul Slavin, senior vice president
of ABC News Gathering told a House of Lords Select Committee on Communications that while the
network's evening news audience is growing, its audience in the 25-54 demographic is
declining. He stated that if this group continues to turn away from the evening news,
then it is not inconceivable that evening news will disappear across the networks.
Anchor Away:
Katie Couric's ill-fated voyage with CBS. The viewership of nightly national news began to decline more than
two decades ago, before the Internet and before cable news became a big deal. The erosion that has occurred on all
fronts of all the news divisions, beginning in the mid-eighties, when Capital Cities bought ABC and G.E. bought NBC, is well
documented, all the more fastidiously because it not only combines business and human interest but also involves media
people's favorite subject: media people.
Viewcrime: TV
dealers [in Great Britain] are required by law to collect the names and addresses of people who buy
televisions. This info then goes into a giant database. Let me be perfectly clear. This is
mandatory. This is about watching television.
Global Taxes and Global TV Now on the
Agenda. [Scroll down slowly] In addition to global taxes, "The Global Agenda 2009" report
urges creation of a global television channel. ... The report doesn't explain how this new global TV channel
will be financed. But global taxes cannot be ruled out. Perhaps this new era of transparency and
disclosure can start with disclosing details about media sponsorship and backing of the World Economic Forum
and its plans for "global governance."
Interesting
new invention: The advert enforcer. If a new idea from Philips catches on, the company
may not be very popular with TV viewers. The company's labs in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, has been
cooking up a way to stop people changing channels to avoid adverts or fast forwarding through ads they
have recorded along with their target programme.
The Editor says..
My recommendation is to abandon television altogether. It has been rendered obsolete by
the internet (for news) and DVD's (for entertainment). It takes a lot of effort and
imagination to raise children without television. Fortunately, many books have been written,
such as the following:
Alternatives
To TV Handbook: A sweet and practical guide to raising children with little to no TV, with very
workable solutions for children of all ages. Marie McClendon has an MA in Early Childhood Education, and
is a mother of four resourceful children, raised with the methods outlined in this book. 61 pages.
TV-B-Gone:
A small universal remote control for all makes of television sets, with only one
button: POWER OFF.
This comes in handy in waiting rooms and other places where the TV is left on continuously even though
nobody is watching it.
Interesting web site: The Television Project: We help parents understand how
television affects their families and community, and propose alternatives that foster positive emotional,
cognitive, and spiritual development within families and communities.
The Fairness Doctrine
All the material about the Fairness Doctrine has moved
here.
