I didn't have a television until last year. When I had access to one I just found that I watched it to the exclusion of everything else I just didn't get much accomplished. When I got married, I inherited my husbands. So what did we do? We made a point of placing the television in a room other then our living room and didn't get cable or satelitle TV. We buy DVDs of movies or tv shows that we really want to watch. We normally have two shows on the go at any given time and one season lasts for months. The TV is not the default activity for an evening. We're just as likely to sit and read a book, play a board game and occasionaly entertain. I get my news from the radio and the internet. The only thing I notice is that I miss out on a lot of popular culture (don't think this is a bad thing). I don't get the funny commercials or know what current movies are playing. I can live with that.

Our problem is the computer and more recently the XBOX. it's still a novelty. But balance will come or we will force it to by setting ourselves limits. Need to set a good example and help develop healthy habits for our son.

I was reading something about this recently, actually. The book _Endangered Minds_ by Jane M. Healy quotes a Dr, Dee Coulter as saying "TV is an easy scapegoat for everything bad that's happening. But I don't know if it's the TV per se, or if it's an indicator that the family has a fairly sparse repertoire of options - and I'm not just talking about kids in the ghetto. Maybe TV is the only way lots of kids can settle themselves down because no one is there to show them how to work with paint supplies, modeling clay, musical instruments; they have no other nurturance, no one to read them stories, no nature to walk out in, no pets to take care of. We are looking at the absense of all tehse things in so many children's lives. TV becomes a side effect."

Do not insult the glowing orb.

I agree with you, Mike, to a point. I don't think that watching things like Hockey and Baseall games are a bad thing. Nor do I think that watching a few different TV shows a week is a bad thing. For me, those shows are Corner Gas and Mythbusters. They don't really have any of the things that you describe in the first post, and are pretty funny to boot.

I agree that shows like "Friends" and "CSI" are a bad influence. They over-simplify things like Love, Hate and Death. In addition to this, CSI simplifies science (which is reflected in all of the people claiming to be forensics experts nowadays).

"¢ complex, emotionally charged human situations have to be resolved in less than an hour, often less than half an hour;

-I agree with this when it comes to sitcoms and "reality TV". Some shows (like Corner Gas and Seinfeld) don't do this.

"¢ the contexts and consequences of violent resolutions are rarely explored

-See CSI.

"¢ even in "family" comedy shows, incidents and humour are unsustainable in real life

-Once again. see any sitcom.

"¢ depictions of reality are distorted by production priorities, even in "educational" programming (the nature show will show a snake or shark yaffling its prey. for example, but not the 48 hours or several weeks of it digesting that meal)

- This is why many "doocumentaries" and shows on the Discovery Channel are misleading. While all that they give you is indeed true, they don't give you the _entire_ truth.

"¢ fact and fantasy are homogenised is a quest for high-density image outputs

-Agreed

"¢ the simulation of activity by frequent short cuts (from camera angle to camera angle) makes it impossible for television to convey anything as complicated as an idea or a proposition: the "sound bite" has become social discourse

-Do you mean scene cuts, or from different camera to another camera in the same scene? This is why I like Corner Gas. If I am not mistaken, it uses only one Camera for shooting scenes.

"¢ influence orients towards "celebrities" whose image and style establish their authority and air time, rather than the content or intelligence of what they know, say or present.

-This is why a good movie is even better when it features relatively unknown actors (see "Crash"). You know that It's because of the content, rather than the star power.

"¢ television is increasing hungry for advertising revenue and ill-placed to challenge the consumerism that is generating many of the world's problems.

-Completley agree. This will never change. It will always be about the money.

Basically, I think that the idea is to limit how much TV you watch (everything in moderation), to take what you're watching with a grain of salt, and see the shows for what they truly are (ex: Sitcoms as simple entertainment. Something to get your mind off of other things for a while.)

-Geoff

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Check out the UCC's report on empire. In it you will find an interesting phrase: "colonization of consciousness." TV is the primary mode of carrying out this colonizing agenda. We, in North America, don't really notice it because we are very much part of the culture that produces the content that TV blasts at the world. But go to someplace like Lima or Mumbai, and after walking around in the streets, go back to your hotel room and turn on the TV. The disconnect will be stark. What, of all that you have seen during the day, even remotely resembles Baywatch, which is still viewed daily by hundreds of millions of people around the globe? And yet, more than any other cultural "property", Baywatch defines the world's reality.