All TV is bad?

[Benjamin Scott]

On Jun 19 at 12:30pm, Jim Kuzdrall wrote:
> Since the video is just pretty pictures, this transcript is all of the 
> information the program offered you.

   I generally agree with your analysis, but I think you're missing something 
critical here.  While the video may be, and indeed often is, nothing more then 
pretty pictures, it often is much more.  As they say, "a picture is worth a 
thousand words".  One of the reasons I watch TV is because my mind is very bad 
at coming up with imagery on its own.  I will understand something a lot better 
with some visual aides.  I also find that, for some things, no amount of prose 
description can equal real motion video.  Take, say, footage of Niagara falls, 
or of an atomic bomb test, or even a busy city street.

   (As an aside: "A picture is worth a thousand words."  Hmmmm.  32 frames per 
second.  22 minutes for the average "30 minute" program.  60 seconds in a 
minute.  22 * 60 * 32 * 1000.  That's about 42 million words for a half-hour 
program.  Not bad.  ;-)  )

   I also watch TV for entertainment.  No, TV isn't a motion picture, nor is it 
theater, nor is it a good book.  But none of those are each other, either. 
The fact that an art form is *different* doesn't mean it is inherently bad.

   Of course, I also have a rather eclectic and particular selection of 
programming, and I use TiVo to extensively time-shift everything and skip past 
the commercials.  If I had to actually be present in front of the tube when a 
program was broadcast, I'd watch little to nothing, for sure.  TiVo has made 
TV useful to me.

   On an interesting (and slightly more on-topic) note, I think (or, at least, 
hope) we're going to see the "broadcast" model of TV, radio, and movies change 
radically in the coming years.

   We're already starting to see it, with intelligent, random-access recorders 
like TiVo.  It's a short step from recording broadcast programs and playing 
them back when I want to to downloading and playing only the programs I'm 
interested in.  Indeed, the rumor mill says TiVo is already working on just 
that.  Their problem is explaining it to the dinosaurs who haven't quite yet 
caught on to what that big, glowing, fast-moving object hurtling through the 
sky at them is.

   We're seeing it with movies, too.  Theater sales, in terms of *tickets 
sold*, are not what they used to be.  More and more people "wait for the 
video" and watch what they want to watch, when they want, in the comfort of 
their own homes.  They use DVDs for the content transfer, but DVDs are just 
another bitsteam.  There's that old line about the bandwidth of a station 
wagon full of tapes traveling down the highway.  Today it's an SUV full of 
DVDs.  When Internet bandwidth becomes cheap enough, you don't need a 
motor-vehicle anymore.

   Then we have things like the various web sites and peer-to-peer networks 
devoted to the distribution of illegally copied material.  Obvious problems 
there, of course.  But the thing that is often talked about, but never done in 
practice, is that those media could easily be used for legitimate distribution 
as well.  The media cartel hates the idea, of course, but authors, artists, 
producers, etc., can use these media to distribute their works independently, 
without the middle-man (RIAA/MPAA/etc.).  No longer does the media world have 
to be divided into "mainstream" and "obscure"; you can now reach an audience 
of hundreds, thousands, or millions for small and proportional investments.

   This is something fairly new, and quite powerful.  It's the ultimate 
evolution of Gutenberg's printing press: Media for the masses, *by* the 
masses.

   The real question is whether the masses want that much participation and 
self-control in their lives, or if they'd rather just be sheep.

   We live in interesting times.

-- 
Ben <dragonhawk at iname.com>