[LexBaird]

The choking, smothering and all-pervasive prevalence of Television in our culture, which for many replaces literature as well as serving to crush the mental abilities to find subtleties and broader meanings in stories

Here is a great point. Most TV stories are all about "surface". There are no underlying subtexts, themes, or storylines. The few, rare complex characters either create huge hits, or are swiftly canceled in favor of couch potato fare. The typical 1.5 hour cinema fare is the same.

[Stoat]

The choking, smothering and all-pervasive prevalence of Television in our culture, which for many replaces literature as well as serving to crush the mental abilities to find subtleties and broader meanings in stories

Here is a great point. Most TV stories are all about "surface". There are no underlying subtexts, themes, or storylines. The few, rare complex characters either create huge hits, or are swiftly canceled in favor of couch potato fare. The typical 1.5 hour cinema fare is the same.

Agreed.  Since Television is (mainly) funded by advertising and the rates that advertising brings, a great deal of research has gone into targeting the people most likely to be influenced by advertising as well as in understanding how to structure the scripts and timing of television programs in order to provide the maximal profit return to advertisers.

Long ago, it was discovered that the the typical attention span of their targeted audience was just under 15 minutes and so not only are commercials scheduled at those intervals but scripts are written not only to break at those times but to provide an action or dialog 'hook' that keeps the targeted viewer from changing the channel as well as insuring that the subject matter and depth dealt with in that 12-15 minute interval is something that can be easily digested by someone with a 3rd grade education and remembered, to some degree, for another ten minutes until the commercials are over and the program resumes.

Just as airline films are not intended to enthrall or foster philosophical thought but to keep the passengers quiet, docile and noncomplaining during the flight, so also television programs are designed not to educate or to better the lives of a coherent, thoughtful person but merely to keep them in front of the advertising spots for as long as possible.

This makes a love of reading and a love of literature a seditious act in the eye of the advertiser.

I'm delighted to know that a multibillion dollar industry is thoroughly pissed off at me whenever I sit down and pick up a book   :-).

The choking, smothering and all-pervasive prevalence of Television in our culture, which for many replaces literature as well as serving to crush the mental abilities to find subtleties and broader meanings in stories

Here is a great point. Most TV stories are all about "surface". There are no underlying subtexts, themes, or storylines. The few, rare complex characters either create huge hits, or are swiftly canceled in favor of couch potato fare. The typical 1.5 hour cinema fare is the same.