I regularly tell my child that TV melts your brain. Empirical support for that claim sits in the White House, watching four to eight hours of boob-tube babble daily and then emitting statements and policies as incoherent as any stream of talking heads and male-enhancement ads.
Some interesting research on Italian voters offers more substance to my parental claim. Three Italian researchers looking at tendencies to watch Silvio Berlusconi’s low-grade television programming on Mediaset have found that watching lots of entertainment TV not only erodes one’s intelligence but inclines one to vote for populist parties:
…the study did find that Italians who watched a lot of Mediaset before the age of 10 performed worse on a series of numeracy and literacy tests. And the more exposure conscripts to Italy’s army had to entertainment television, the more likely they were to be exempted from military service because they had failed to meet its minimum intelligence requirements.
…As it happens, early exposure to entertainment television did not only make Italian citizens more likely to vote for Berlusconi in the 1990s; it also made them more likely to vote for [populist Five Star Movement founder Beppe] Grillo in the 2010s. The enmity between Grillo and Berlusconi makes this effect all the more striking. Since Mediaset never hyped Grillo in the way it had Berlusconi, direct propaganda can’t explain the voting pattern. Perhaps, though, Mediaset had primed viewers to prefer simplistic, populist appeals. Here, then, is evidence that low-quality television can coarsen political discourse—and favor populist movements—even decades after it is first introduced [Yascha Mounk, “The More You Watch, the More You Vote Populist,” The Atlantic, 2019.07.06].
Get smarter citizens and smarter government: turn off your TV, read more books!
I’m an old feller who used watch Maverick on Friday nights as a kid. I remember the old fellers of those days saying that the tee vee was a one eyed thief that took away all your own thoughts. I thought they were just old guys then, but they turned out to be brilliant observers of human nature. It’s been 14 years now that I’ve not had a tee vee in the house. I may not be smarter, but I damn sure am happier.
The Fox channels even have a higher resolution it seems, to further lure you in, just like video lottery. Yep, we be dumb and getting dumber.
Except if you want your local weather forecast! :-)
Wow, Jerry. 14 years? Good for you. I retired 15 years ago (age 50) and knew I’d better set some rules or I’d end up like half of SD males and sit in some sh*thole bar all day. Haven’t been in one in 15 years. Another is no TV until the 5:30 local news and then only sports at night. There are exceptions, of course but rules and discipline massage my German half well.
BTW, Cory. Radio is just as bad. I spent eight hours a day (at least), for about 30 years, listening to it. Classical, jazz, rock, oldies. Including at least 15 years listening to right wing Limbaugh, left wing PBS and all the in betweens. A good education on the inner psyche of the opponent and positive reinforcement on our team. Gave up daytime radio ten years, ago. I still fall asleep listening to right wing out of San Antonio, Texas. The timer turns it off after an hour and I’m rarely still awake. Some bad habits are hard to break completely.
Phil offers a good reminder that TV isn’t all dreck. I wonder: could we do a study on people who watch just the news and the weather, then turn off the set and read books?
My Mom was even more select. She had the Weather Channel on TV continually with the sound down, the last ten years. The bookmobile lady would stop by once a week or so with books she’d selected and subjects she liked.
Myself, I watch movies. Average over 175 a year, from every country that makes movies. Today, I’m watching “Ash Is Purest White” from China (subtitles). You have know idea what Iran is like until you’ve watched half a dozen of their movies. Hint … It’s not a third world country and women aren’t treated as badly as their reputation denotes.
PS … for you retired or vacationing folks, some of the finest TV of the year is now on daily, for the next two weeks. No kidding! Best scenery, athletic competition, and commentary hands down. Tour de France. Stage 3 was today. (They now have drone cameras that photo the little towns from the air. Fascinating :))
It’s my understanding that Trump has a letter from Nixon, which hangs in the Oval Office, which encouraged Trump toget into politics in the late 1980s.
But with that said, even Nixon apparently understood the dangers of television, however. But ironically he didn’t understand the dangers of Trump back in the day. Since he discovered Trump’s political or manipulative TV talent while watching Trump with his wife Pat back in the day, a viewing which then fostered that “proud” letter from Nixon to Trump:
25:35
http://booknotes.org/Watch/24604-1/Richard-Nixon.aspx
Hysterical Historian wasn’t quite as nuts back in the 70s, while Nixon’s paranoia was mounting. What a ringing endorsement. 🙄🙄
I haven’t had any tv for about a year. I watch a few things online, mostly creative people making things. I get local news, weather and sports online. I thought it would be difficult going without tv, but it wasn’t and now I don’t want it back because it’s obnoxious.
Back in the day, before dumbass dubya tried to bias public television towards the right, they had programs like the McLaughlin Group hosted by right wingnut John McLaughlin, a program from the Chamber of Commerce with a right wing tool bellering at all the guests and my favorite, The Constitution, That Delicate Balance with an equal number of left and right guests discussing theoretical situations involving the constitution.
Public broadcasting lived up to the “fair and balanced” fake noize lies about being.
I arree with Porter on Le Tour de France.
Is it still the Toiur de banned substances?
I don’t think I can give up TV completely. I agree there is a lot of trash on TV, mostly in the form of low-budget lowest-common-denominator reality shows and crime dramas but I tend to avoid those. I’m mostly into the news and documentary type stuff. Science Channel still runs a lot of intriguing programs that actually teach science and National Geographic isn’t too far off. History on the other hand… isn’t really History anymore.
What about kids programming though? PBS still has some educational kids shows like Sesame Street and Nature Cat, though it faces competition from cable networks like Nick Jr and Disney Jr. The popularity of Paw Patrol is insane. Nick Jr. runs mini marathons of the show almost daily and merchandise is everywhere.
If you go to a site called TVTropes and search for an article called “Network Decay”, you can read examples of how once great TV channels like TLC or History eventually degraded into channels that hardly resemble their original purpose.
“TV” isn’t really “TV” any more. These days most televisions have been transformed into computer monitors. So when one says anything about watching or not watching “TV” it includes materials available online or by streaming. If you watch youtube videos on your computer there is nothing to prevent you from watching the same videos on a modern “TV.” Anyone who uses a computer regularly to view videos essentially is watching “TV.” And that applies to the screens on modern phones – which are actually small computers.
Maybe the more important questions relate to the content of what is watched, whether it be on standard “TV,” computer monitor “TV,” or phone “TV.” It is the content of what we watch that likely affects minds and thinking, not the fact of watching “TV.”
Porter mentions watching Iranian movies… which gets me thinking about how one of the reasons we watch movies is to learn about people and gain empathy from experiences that we would otherwise never encounter. Good literature teaches us empathy. Contemporary “reality” TV seems designed to teach us the opposite.
If we can get past the drugs, I would endorse Porter’s call for watching the Tour de France. I enjoy watching an honest competition. Seeing our fellow beings competing and winning by their own natural strength can inspire us all to perform better in our own challenges. “Reality” TV, however, is rigged to spotlight not actual human merits but contrived drama.
But maybe the problem isn’t so much the content as the presentation. We could present the best human contests or Iranian movies or other wondrous video spectacles we could find, but if we interrupt them every five minutes with a jumble of pitches for unrelated and mostly unnecessary things that most of us wouldn’t bother looking for without advertisement, we turn every viewer’s brain to a distracted pile of mush.
I appreciate Bearcreekbat’s point: indeed, if you unplugged a television and watched it intently, you would not suffer the same erosion of mental capacities as you experience when staring at a powered television flashing its commercial images at you.
And Wade, yes, shows like Sesame Street and Mister Rogers are exceptional programming that have helped generations of children learn.
Wade gets me thinking: imagine two scales, one for every television program ever produced, one for every book ever published. On each scale, put all the good content on one side, all the bad content on the other. Would television and books have different good:bad ratios?
Would television and books have different good:bad ratios? No. Exactly the same ratios because both mediums were human created. Good human stories vs bad human stories. Good fiction vs bad fiction. Good nonfiction vs inaccurate, misleading, and misdirecting nonfiction.
Humans need to be part of a story no matter how shallow or manipulative it may be.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/am-i-right/201308/story-telling-is-necessary-human-survival
TV v Computer? Either Or? BCB is right. They are the same so why pay for both when the computer gives more access to more information, movies, sports, music videos than tv programming. You read books online. Try that with a telly. Three plus years w/o Dish and no locaL programming. All I really miss is watching NFL football and I can follow games or live stream them on computer.
I gave up TV ten years ago and I don’t miss the overprice cable bill at all. The only thing I miss is watching my boys at home (Vikings football), but I can watch that in the game room at my friend’s place out yonder and it’s more fun😀
We got rid of the TV when my daughter was born. For 10 years she only saw TV at her friends’ houses or my neighbor’s house. My daughter became a voracious reader, went through a lot of construction and drawing paper, and spent a lot of time playing outside and exploring nature. We went to a lot of movies, free or cheap concerts, etc., so she wasn’t completely deprived of contemporary culture.
I know she missed some stuff. Her trivia game suffers from not seeing TV back then, but that’s a small price to pay.
That ten years without TV was good for me, too. The only thing I missed was news and sports. I listened to a lot of radio, particularly SD public radio and local stations to get news. I found I loved small town sports on radio, too.
Our neighbor offered us a crumby black and white TV, and I accepted it after talking to my daughter about rationing the TV watching. She was OK with that, though I had second thoughts when all she wanted to watch was the tween-oriented shows on Friday night and Saturday morning. But, we watched them together, then turned it off and read stories or went for a hike. I think my daughter just wanted to be able to join in discussing the shows with her friends, something she couldn’t do for most of her childhood.
My daughter’s high school years were mostly computer-driven, and TV had faded as an attraction. I think computers more of a problem for kids these days.
Being born in the late 80s, I wasn’t around to experience the large amount of toy commercials masquerading as TV shows that were popular earlier in the decade. These were things like He-Man, Transformers, G.I. Joe, etc. There are who grew up in this era that fondly remember these shows, especially He-Man and Transformers. Both of those shows have spawned dedicated fan websites and people get together on forums to discuss these toylines to this very day.
Personally, we didn’t get satellite TV until 1995, so I missed out on a lot of the popular shows and content that were shown on Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network. I only had ABC, CBS and SDPB growing up, and I do remember waking up every Saturday morning to watch the cartoon shows on those channels. I also fondly remember watching Sesame Street, Arthur and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.
Tour de France to me is 90 % scenery. The farming techniques always catch my interest. (Today they went through champagne country and did tours of the cellars.) 🥂🍾
Like NASCAR the other 10% is the wrecks. The mountain downhills are thrilling. The individual cyclists are fairly insignificant but 100% necessary.
– For as long as the Tour has existed, since 1903, its participants have been doping themselves. For 60 years doping was allowed. For the past 30 years it has been officially prohibited. Yet the fact remains; great cyclists have been doping themselves, then and now. – Wikipedia
Le Tour de France coverage also shows a lot of castles and old churches and provide some brief history. Since I took an art history course that covered a lot of early church architecture, it is very interesting to me. There are still a lot of those flying buttress cathedrals in France.
On the subject of flying buttress’, check out this rendering of a proposed renovation to the cathedral in Paris, Mr. Pay. Cracks me up. :)
https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-news/notre-dame-proposed-rooftop-pool
I put together flying “buttress”, “cracks” me up and Porter’s interesting sense of humor and expected something different. I was wrong, so very wrong.* Excuse me. I’ll go sit in the corner for Bad Girls now.
*In my defense, I had just been perusing the Sports Illustrated “Body” issue. It affected my thought process.
I’m not sure how closely this tracks, but the difference between this woman, born on 3rd base, and Hysterical Historian, is stark.
Abigail Disney (Yes, Those Disneys), says, “I guess I feel a cynicism about the princess thing and the ultra femininity thing because I had my life handed to me on a silver platter. And I did not ask or earn it.”
is.gd/O8KELg
BTW, she’s a self-avowed liberal. 😁