By Вen Li
It isn’t difficult to make the label ‘mindless drivel’ stick to much television content, but mindless moments are vital to our survival and if we get 120 channels of it instead of three, we are better off.
Decline-of-civilization alarmists blame television for dumbing down our culture, pointing to our herd-like fixation as evidence of our spirits being anaesthetized to reality. But watching low quality television programming is not evidence of a second-rate intelligence or the harbinger of an Armageddon of stupidity.
Some of society’s brightest minds watch the MTV Music Awards. They don’t suffer any long-term effects from seeing the tormented, repressed sexuality of Britney Spears rebelling against her Christian roots with I-wanna-be-naked dance montages. And if the consistent increase in patent applications for invention and innovation is any indication,
we are not getting dumber as a society.
So what if there is nothing but community jazzercise on at midnight? Somewhere in Carstairs there’s a middle-aged shift-worker low-impacting their way to a better self. That’s good. And can we blame endless Star Trek repeats for the dearth of social skills Trekkies are notorious for, or is the lack of interpersonal adroitness the cause of Star Trek fanaticism? There’s no point in hiding the symptoms in lieu of curing the disease.
Endless channels don’t undermine the fundamental purposes of television, but actually enhance them. Television primarily serves to communicate information and/
or to provide a restorative escape from thinking. Every additional channel enhances one or both of those functions. The content we get is either telling us something, or telling us nothing-both serve their
purpose.
Do the extra channels diminish the quality of already existing programming? None of the major networks seems at all to be undermined by increasing numbers of specialty channels. There is still a new crop of sitcoms every year and healthy advertising revenues for the media conglomerates that draw in the bulk of viewers. New channels are just like bonus items on the old network menu.
The number of channels only increases with the progress of channel-expanding technologies. As satellite and Internet television become more and more cost competitive, they will soon remedy the one legitimate complaint of those who rail against the explosion of new channels-that the cable monopoly constrains viewers’ choice.
Currently, channels are bundled into packages that don’t come with many options. Consumers can’t pick and choose the stations that they wish to give their allegiance to. As the broadcast options increase, the natural monopoly of cable providers will be destroyed and they will be forced to enhance choice just to stay alive.
Soon, we will be able to pick and choose what flavours of mind candy we want. We will even be able to choose an exclusive diet of heartier fare composed solely of The Tips For Performing Open-Heart Surgery Channel and The History and Implications of the Cold War Network. What a glorious (yawn) day that shall be.
The rapid growth of technology is only going to increase the number of channels that we have and thus the number of bizarre and seemingly unwatchable programs that we may come across in a given surf. But these channels will be viable. It will cost pennies a glass to produce and broadcast television programs in the future, and niches will multiply like nymphomaniacal rabbits-of-loose-morals. And it shall be good.
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