Satellite TV Specials
How many times have you been out on a business trip just sitting in an office just waiting for Satellite Tv Networks Consumers Guide person youre supposed to meet? The one day they schedule you a meeting is the day your favorite sports team is playing on TV.Can TV rescue us? Or is it TV from which we must be rescued?
Will TV end up being the most Pc Satellite Tv Free Satellite Tv On Pc educational tool Access Cable Tv On Internet invented? Or will TV finally plunge us all into a permanent stupor?
Is TV the benevolent agent of all that is good, a magic well of entertainment, a cornucopia of culture?
Or is TV the the evil agent of all that is bad, a purveyor of trash, a corrupter, a thief of time?
Well...yes and no.
The fact is, TV is a little bit of everything: Dream merchant, mentor, windbag, bore, enchantress, confidante, storyteller, hypnotist, braggart, buffoon, flatterer, sage.
TV is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. TV is the barking dog outside your window at night. TV is your favorite uncle, the one who cracks corny jokes, makes funny noises and always brings you presents.
TV is your cousin from Minneapolis who visits right at suppertime with his wife and your four cousins you've never met.
TV is all this, but none of these metaphors are exactly right. More than anything, TV just is. Perhaps the only thing that can be said with exactitude about TV is: It won't go away.
Given this, the question is: Do we use TV, or let it use us?
The issues that divide people over television are, like TV sets themselves, hardly ever black-and-white.
Let's consider, for instance, whether TV has the capacity to educate the masses.
Yes, it is, we can say, as a surprising amount of what is on TV is educational in nature, at least in part; indeed, entire channels are dedicated to educational programming.
Then again, we might have to say no, because TV's primary aim is not to educate but to sell products -- and toward that end the majority of TV programs are designed, still, to benumb us, to soften us up for the kill.
Maybe, we could say, TV could educate the people who watch it the most, if it would not insist on hiding its light under a bushel.
Everything having to do with TV involves a trade-off. We can have TV in schools, bringing information to kids, but we must have commercials.
Speaking of schools, TV has not yet -- the last time I looked, at least -- quite replaced human teachers, the way it often replaces human parents in homes.
Not all homes, though. Families still watch TV together, and many are enriched by the experience. In this light we can think of TV as an electronic campfire, where stories are told and retold, where we can warm our hands in the glow of good cheer.
For TV is nothing if not cheerful.
Most of television is relentlessly upbeat. It wants us to like it. We may feel like turning to TV for a pick-me-up; it will assure us that we are unique and extraordinary, deserving of all the pampering we can get.
A little of that, of course, goes a long way. Before too long, TV's endless 2008 05 27 Archive becomes annoying for its transparent insincerity. And dispiriting, for pressing home to us all the things we are not, and all the things we will never have.
Those who justify TV say that it reflects society. Its detractors say that it gives us a distorted picture -- an exaggeration or caricature of life.
Both are right: TV, in one moment, can stun us with powerful images of the way we live, and, in the next moment, insult us with preposterous characters and impossible situations.
For the most part, TV's nuggets of gold are like needles in so many haystacks. Mining them takes diligence, patience, the capacity to sit (and sit and sit) and wait. It wears one out.
But TV never gets weary. It's always there, eager to please, accommodating, ingratiating, faithful, relentless -- tireless as eternity.
I'm a writer living near Nashville, and maybe the only one within a 50-mile radius who's never written a song. Writing fiction is my preference, but journalism provides my daily bread. I'm from the Clark Kent school of journalism -- I never carry a pad to take notes, but rely on my super-memory. Actually, in my stories I 2008 05 28 Archive up quotes, making people sound more interesting and well-spoken than they are, so they never object. You know how Truman Capote ("In Cold Blood") gave birth to the "non-fiction novel?" I'm working on Web Based Satellite Tv the "fictional news" story.
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