A Historic Speech

[Diamond Cross]

<dl><dd>"When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better.</dd></dl> <dl><dd>But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.</dd></dl> <dl><dd>You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you'll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it."<sup id="cite_ref-0" class="reference">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasteland_Speech#cite_note-0</sup></dd></dl>The Wasteland Speech was a speech given by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Newton N. Minow to the convention of the National Association of Broadcasters on May 9, 1961.

When there was only three Networks.

 

[El Mahdi]

Sorry, I just saw this after watching TV all night.

I don't have time to comment right now, but I will after my show is over...

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

To think, he said this before there was 24 hour "news" and reality television...

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

... Indeed. And no hope of it ever improving in the future as near as I can tell.

 

[RangerWickett]

On Demand television via the internet (or cell networks) reduces the value of programming that just fills air time.

I mean, just think of how silly it is to watch a show just because it's on now. Imagine if you went to a bookstore, and there was a cycle of products, with only one product available at any given time.

Hm, then again, the vast majority of a bookstore is probably a wasteland too, because it just needs to fill shelf space, and the opportunity cost of having lots of crap is low, especially because folks might buy some of that crap.

The opportunity cost of hosting data is even lower.

I dunno. I just am certain that I have to sit through less crap today in order to get entertaining 'TV' (I watch Hulu) than I used to.

 

[Starman]

Sturgeon's Revelation

 

[faith1806]

when television is bad,computer is good, i think, lol. yeah, the benefits we get from PC are substantial

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I don't think that the television even tries hard to dispute it anymore. Once it did, when there were few outlets for TV content. But now . . . evidence is overwhelming and TV consumers are still content.

 

[Janx]

I think that technologies thhat let you pick and choose the shows and when you watch them are how saavy people get around this problem.

DVRs alone let people pick the time for when to watch their show. Its so useful with fast forwarding, you can queue up plenty of shows for the week, and never have to watch live TV or channel surf, yet see plenty of the "good stuff"

itunes, NetFlix, Hulu, web broadcasting let you further cherry pick older shows and even bypass the cable company and live broadcast. If you can wait until tomorrow, you can see tonights episode online. Saving having to PAY to watch a broadcast show.

For me, that's pertinent. When I bought my house, a mere 30 miles from the broadcast antennas, the only station I could get on rabit ears was PBS. I had to get cable, pay for what was effectively free TV. Until recently, the bulk of the shows I watched were on cable networks only, that's how crappy network TV has been, so at least it was more valuable.

I would love to save 50-60 bucks a month and fire the cable company. For $1 a show from iTunes, I might be able to do that. Maybe I need to count how many shows we watch per week...

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I would love to save 50-60 bucks a month and fire the cable company. For $1 a show from iTunes, I might be able to do that. Maybe I need to count how many shows we watch per week...

I'll admit, I dropped my cable service down to a $13/month local stations only service. I'm getting internet through a decent DSL package. There are only two shows not on ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, PBS that we want to watch. We get them by a season pass in iTunes (Justified and White Collar on USA). Not ditching cable, but it's close. And we got those shows without commercials.