Hollow Heads

I cannot (take the time to) count how many posts I've made about mediocrity and television, but I don't think I've put the two topics together yet, so here goes...

Television broadcasts, programs, "presentations," and what-have-you are really only the vehicle carrying the stock and trade of the industry: commercials. The entire medium is simply a conduit for commercial delivery. Reviewing old commercials and old broadcasts (or sadly, just recollecting them, being old enough to have seen early TV) reveals this truth pretty frankly. "We'll be back after these commercial messages..." was an honest transition into the meat of the matter. Commercials were blunt and straight forward, more product centered, more honest in their delivery, "Don't you want to drive a Buick?" It was an odd balance people tolerated because the medium was new and shiny. As time has passed, the content between the commercials has come to act like it owns the show. It feels to viewers like the commercials are interruptions.

TV has undergone an interesting evolution. Now (if you ask me) more time, talent and money is spent on the production of commercials than on what lies between. About all that's in the middle any more is reality shows, low budget competitions that dull the mind to even recount: Are you smarter than a 5th grader, Biggest Loser, Big Brother...

I rant about this because I know so many people who remain transfixed by television (some even in my own household). Last night I brought up that much of what they are addicted to can be viewed online, on demand, but it fell on deaf ears (I believe there was some funny commercial attracting attention).

I worry about my kids, as I know I've shared before, but I also worry about my older family members. When they finally rise up from the couch or easy chair, the conversation is either about television or some random gossip. There is no meat. There aren't even any potatoes. It's draft.

I sometimes think hard times would be better for America, right down to my own household. I'm talking really hard times, where all this blogging would have to again be in a journal, hardcopy. All our entertainment would be what fun we could make out of breaks in our back-breaking work, where gardening would be for survival instead of good karma. I wonder if then we'd somehow become better people, a better nation? Conversations might turn toward things of the spirit or at least real life.

I wish I could find some way, short of going back in time 100 years, to help people become the best they can be. A first step, in my thinking, is to be wary of the television, to own it rather than be owned by it.