What’s the Word: TV, take me back to good old days
Television is ubiquitous in our world today. It seems to be pretty much everywhere, in schools, in restaurants, in airport lounges, and, of course, in a huge percent of American homes, as well as homes all across the planet. We are bombarded with the technology. Satellites beam signals all over the earth to the point one can receive some sort of television pretty much anywhere.
We depend on television for entertainment, for news and information and even for shopping these days. The proliferation of shopping networks and late night info-mercials has been one of the most fascinating aspects of the changes in the medium for me.
The commercial as entertainment. It blows the mind. I have to admit I have been caught up in these programs at times, transfixed by some shill touting a kitchen appliance that will cook a full meal in five minutes and, even better, you can serve it in the lid thus cutting down on clean-up.
At first, I found this concept pretty weird in and of itself, but if you think about it, it does have some advantages. I mean, you don’t really have to worry about commercials do you? The whole thing is a commercial. Of course, some day someone will probably figure out that you could have a commercial within a commercial.
Imagine how weird it will be to have good old George Forman’s latest info-mercial interrupted by yet another commercial for, say, Tyson Chicken or some megamarket chain’s latest ground beef sale.
Face it, it’s got to happen. And for all I know, it may already have happened. I don’t watch them much anymore. Turns out those machines will indeed cook a full meal in five minutes, but only if you put food in there that takes only five minutes to cook in the first place.
Frozen chicken to the table in five is not going to happen. I’ve tried it. I admit it does come out really crunchy, but not in a good way.
Another trend in television that intrigues me is the way it seems to have evolved into a system designed to scare us half to death, and I’m not talking about the latest episode of “Buffy” or “Kingdom Hospital.”
I’m talking about legitimate news programs which regale us with tales of mad cow disease that threatens to turn our brains into a mass of maddened slush, flesh eating viruses that threaten to turn our entire bodies into a pile of goo, and my personal favorite, aggressive African bees that are destined to attack us in huge, stinging swarms that will make us wish the other stuff had got us already.
The fact that none of this has happened doesn’t really seem to matter to the fear-mongers.
“OK, it hasn’t happened,” they admit. “But you know what? It could.”
Yeah, and the sun could go nova tomorrow, I feel like saying, but you don’t have to go around telling everyone about it and scaring them half out of their wits. Of course, for those afflicted with mad cow disease I suppose that wouldn’t apply, since whatever wits they had would have already melted.
I long for the simple times when all we had to worry about was whether Wally was going to be able to get the Beaver out of whatever scrape he happened to get himself into this week.
Ah, those were the days. Life was simple. There were only three, or maybe four, channels on the tube and you didn’t have to spend half the night surfing and trying to figure out what in the heck to watch, and the only things you really had to worry about was the atomic bomb, smallpox and polio.
Oh OK, so maybe it wasn’t all good in the good old days, but somehow I still felt a whole lot safer back then.
Charlie Johnson is news editor of the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].