All TV is bad?

[Jim Kuzdrall]

On Saturday 18 June 2005 10:39 pm, Tom Buskey wrote:
> > Don't bother with the TV. You're not missing anything. Really.
>
> I can agree that watching TV is probably better for you, but nothing
> on?  Well...
>
> I like many of the history and science stuff that gets on PBS,

    The last time we had a TV set up was 1987.  I gave up on the 
"history channel" type programming just after the news and just before 
WKRP reruns.

    The educational documentaries have two problems: information rate 
and information depth.

    To demonstrate this point to your satisfaction (or not), write out 
the dialog from one such program you find typical.  (Sometimes you can 
get a transcript from their web site.)  Since the video is just pretty 
pictures, this transcript is all of the information the program offered 
you.

    Less than two pages usually holds all the information in a 30 minute 
program.  With the simple words and short sentences, an average reader 
can get through it in 5 minutes.  I can't waste an half hour to get 5 
minutes of information.  I might justify it to make me sleepy prior to 
bed, but I read the gnhlug-discuss for that.

    The content depth is set for the education level of an 11-year old 
child.

Typical: music, pleasant video of grasshopper on a sedge, "The natives 
call this fellow a Big Green", music rises, grasshopper moves to 
another sedge, "It eats this grass that grows near the lake edge", 
camera pulls back to show the beautiful panorama, sounds of 
unidentified insects overlays the music, "Big Green is the largest 
grasshopper in Central America"...

Missing: What "natives"?  Why not use the tribe's name?  What is the 
Latin name for "Big Green" so I can look it up?  Since the shape of the 
blade shows it is clearly a sedge, at least use the term so your 
audience becomes aware that not all long bladed plants are grasses.  
How many grams of "grass" does it eat per day?  Big in what way, 
longest, heaviest, widest wingspan?  What are the dimensions, weight, 
etc.

    Perhaps I am just too serious about life and should lighten up, but 
I find it so much faster to pick up a book or a written document on the 
Web - for which I use my KDE Konqueror browser and SuSe 9.2 distribution 
(to bring this back On Topic).

    I have lied a bit.  The TV came out of storage for the first Gulf 
War.  The coverage was so inane that it stayed on the shelf for the 
second.  The Patriot's first Super Bowl games used up an evening.  The 
third Red Sox World Series game was enough to put faces and bodies with 
the names, so I "watched" the rest on radio.

    TV is dividing society into two dangerously different groups: those 
under its mind-controlling spell and those not.

Jim Kuzdrall