Kill Your Television

No, really, right now. If you have a television, unplug it and throw it out the window. It's not worth your time.

Lately I've been going to the complex's workout room to ride the stationary bike and confirm how much I really dislike running. As a new resident, I haven't really figured out the television hierarchy - aka when it is o.k. to change the channel or turn it off (this is much better than the first week when I didn't know how. Apparently you drag the stationary bike over and climb it). Since I don't really know the television etiquette, I just leave it alone, even though it is usually on. I don't own a television quite deliberately, making the workout television my only exposure to TV. And this exposure has led me to believe that there is nothing redeeming about watching television.

Granted, I am usually there between 6:30-7:30 when television may be particularly bad, but my tour-du-television has been quite disheartening. Here is what I have gleaned:

The news: I am a news junky and could drool over Anderson Cooper for hours (so pretty, so gay), but the news is uniformly awful. I do not want CNN to report on the most popular stories from CNN.com, I do not think the slick sound effects help Fox News convey its message, and NBC news actually has a segment of small stories from around the US which carry particularly "interesting" (read: graphic or sensationalist) pictures, but no bearing on the rest of the country. Spin drips off every news cast with people condemning Hezbollah or Hamas or Israel or US foreign policy. This stuff is tearing the country apart, the majority of the country knows it, but they have no good news choices. Old-school boring CNN needs to come back to actually fulfill the Fox mantra "Nothing but News".

MTV and VH1: To me, these are interchangeable except that VH1 often shows "The best of XXXX", which is just uniformly boring. Unlike the news, boring is not an asset in the music business. Music, on the other hand, should be. These stations, despite being Music Television and Video Hits One, show no music or videos. Instead, they show the vapid pop culture that millions of impressionable Americans try to emulate with fake tans and a desire for cosmetic surgery. Although often brain candy, too much of these has to rot one's sense of reality. Music videos would be nice vegetables in the MTV and VH1 diet.

Entertainment news: To combine the last two categories into one monster, there are the entertainment news channels (or maybe these are just shows on other channels?). If the other two are bad, this is badness squared. Why do people hang on the lives of the rich and famous whom they will never know? Their lives are more glamorous than yours and may well always be. This is just feeding the rampant consumerism and rising consumer debt of the world while replacing all useful knowledge with Britney Spear's children’s names. I think the inner circle of hell is watching this all day. I actually got off the treadmill I was so appalled.

Sitcoms: I used to watch television. I think I might have been in middle school, or maybe early high school, and I remember watching a lot of sitcoms. Watching sitcoms now, I think I want those hours back. The canned laughter at jokes that aren't that funny and puns seen coming from a mile away are not as good as I remember. The whole plot-line crammed into 22 minutes of tape seems to leave something wanting. I'm not so much upset at these as much as let down. What happened to this segment of industry while I wasn't watching?

"Educational" television: Specifically, I mean the Discovery Channel or other non-fiction outlets, going so far as the Food Network and Travel Channel. These, although substantially better than the rest, are still playing down the intelligence factor. The Discovery Channel, which has such gems as "How It's Made", often gives into the sensationalist programming found on the news channels, with shows on extreme weapons or a whole week devoted to sharks. I understand the desire for viewers, but these channels are running the risk of alienating the intelligent viewer base in favor of getting a little of the pop-culture viewership. Just don't touch of "How It's Made".

Although this obviously doesn't cover all of television, it has convinced me that I'm not missing much. NPR will deliver the news, Wikipedia will be educational programming, and when I want to see Brittney Spear posing nude, Google image search will work fine. As far as going to the workout room, I'm sure I will still be exposed to our rampant television culture, but the next time someone asks if I'm watching the Discovery Channel, I'm telling them yes. They could turn on Entertainment Tonight instead.