Television Impact on Society

  would be the showcase for advertising, the other the showcase for editorial matter. The revenue from Screen 1 would support the material on Screen 2—the debates, the panels, the drama, the weather, and the news. Stations and networks would be in the same boat with publications; the editors would put the whole show together, without one single assist from advertising genius. Ronald Reagan, instead of appearing for General Electric, would appear for Ronald Reagan. Advertising would be regularly scheduled and would have its separate listing in the guide. A master switch would be at the viewer's hand. If he desired utter confusion, he could watch both screens at once. If something occurring on one screen seemed more diverting than the thing occurring on the other, he could flip. The viewer would enter his living room and find both screens going full blast—bedlam. On the advertising screen Zsa Zsa Gabor would be giving the news of underarm security; on the editorial screen the Secreta...

  say the least. If Hart, Schaffner & Marx happened to own a piece of a show, Mr. Kerr would twitch in his seat so violently that he would wear out his critical judgment before the first-act curtain. The TV industry should realize that being in possession of a customer’s ear is a responsibility unlike that of being in possession of his eye. The eye can reject an image, but the ear cannot escape from sound. TV from the start has seized this advantage and exploited it to the hilt, and from the start the audience has resented it. The exploitation mounts, the resentment mounts, and I think the resentment will continue to grow until something gives way and busts. Ideally, if TV is not to preëmpt the attention of the viewer and is to permit him a free choice of material, such as he enjoys with newspapers and magazines, a TV set should have two screens, one right next to the other—a delightful, if chaotic, situation. One screen would be the showcase for advertising, the other the show...

some females of a different order. There is still a pigpen in my barn, and it recalled to my mind certain delicious nights when I had sat up with a sow, receiving each tiny pig as it came slithering into the lantern gleam and placing it in a fairly sterile whiskey carton until such time as its mother was ready to receive it. I could not help comparing the scenes I remembered with the progressive scene I had just watched on television. And I could not help feeling pleased that among the females with whom I was at the moment engaged every uterus was in place.           T he effects of television on our culture and on our tone are probably even greater than we suspect from the events of the last few years. TV’s effect on political campaigning was great, and, as Richard Rovere recently pointed out in these pages, not entirely healthy. The debates were not conducive to reflection and sobriety; they encouraged quick, cagey answers delivered in he...

  presence would be known by the conical pile of manure against the barn, its apex under the window of the tie-up. Most homeowners planted a garden, raised fruits and vegetables and berries, and put their harvest in jars against the long winter. Almost everyone had a few hens picking up the assorted proteins of yard and field. If you walked into a man’s barn, you found a team of work horses shifting their weight from one foot to another. This pleasing rural picture has been retouched until it is hardly recognizable. The family cow has gone the way of the ivory-billed woodpecker. Householders no longer plant gardens if they can avoid it; instead, they work hard, earn money, and buy a TV set and a freeze. Then, acting on advices from the TV screen, they harvest the long, bright, weedless rows at the chain store, bringing home a carton of tomatoes with eye appeal and a package of instant potatoes. The family flock of hens has also disappeared. I still have a flock secreted in my barn,...

it reaches its destination. If I write a letter to a friend in the village a couple of miles away and drop the letter at the post office that is nearest my house, the letter gets taken all the way to Ellsworth, which is about twenty-five miles in the wrong direction. There it gets placed in either the right sack or the wrong sack, according to the way things are going in Ellsworth that day, and then it is rushed back across the county and goes down the road to the addressee. A better way, really, would be for me to take the letter in my hand and start out on foot with it, wearing a bright-orange cap so as to negotiate the deer crossings safely, and hand it to my friend. This would get me out into the air. Railroad passenger service has also been modernized in my state. This was accomplished by the simple, bold act of removing the trains altogether, which is about as modern as you can get and gives Maine the distinction of being the first state on President-elect Kennedy’s new frontier....

  media reduces a person’s social skills in face to face contacts. This lack of social and people skills, as some may call it, can lead to an anti-social lifestyle or personality. These types of people can develop social anxiety when they are around groups of people, especially those they do not know. One study found that online social communication skills and self-esteem are correlated. This indicates a link between the strength of offline relationships and time spent online (Jacobsen & Forste, 2011). Some may argue that social media sites can help people that have preexisting social anxiety and low self-esteem, however the weak ties that are formed between many people on social media are not necessarily basis for good relationships and progressive social interaction. Websites such as Facebook favor those who have close relationships by suggesting friends, tagging photos, asking family and relationship questions, and so on, which may cause others who are already feeling low se...

 The Impact of it As technology grows every day, so does our fascination with what it can do. Technology is amazing and can be very useful in so many ways. It helps people communicate, transfer information, learn, discover, and even save lives in the medical field. For me, the most important uses of the technology I use is my online classes and my cell phone. Technology in transferred in different ways. Technology can be great until the media that comes with it surfaces. For example, besides for mostly school purposes, I am usually on my cell phone instead of my laptop. I have the internet on my cell phone which allows me to have apps, e-mail, and access to websites. Also, I have to admit that I do enjoy watching television. What we see on these outlets of communication and media is often negative. The time and importance we have on these forums and devices is also detrimental to our lives outside of the virtual world. Social media is another forum that impacts society. There are m...

  faced stiff competition from cable’s variety of choices. Between 1983 and 1994, weekly broadcast audience shares (a measure of the number of televisions in use that are tuned to a particular show) for network television dropped from 69 to 52, while cable networks’ shares rose from 9 to 26 (Newcomb, 2004). With a growing number of households subscribing to cable TV, concern began to grow about the levels of violence to which children were becoming exposed. In addition to regularly broadcast network programs, cable offered viewers the chance to watch films and adult-themed shows during all hours, many of which had far more violent content than normal network programming. One study found that by the time an average child leaves elementary school, he or she has witnessed 8,000 murders and more than 100,000 other acts of violence on television (Blakey, 2002). Although no conclusive links have been drawn between witnessing violence on television and carrying out violence in real life, ...

  While  Homicide  was popular,  Friends  dominated American pop culture and had a global influence.  Friends  showed an imaginary version of New York where six twenty-somethings, some of whom had no discernible employment, could afford spacious apartments and daily lattes. This is not to take issue with shows that paint a rosy picture of life. Instead, the point is that popular television content is made to entertain, not inform. The most entertaining and popular shows of the 20th century were not poorly made, nor were they necessarily detrimental to society as mainstays of the culture. They were, however, usually void of thoughtful social content. Television, the most popular mass medium in the world, often serves to distract. Scholars will often suggest that a “balanced” television diet is best. In other words, we should not expect for-profit television producers to forego revenues to deliver mostly informational content. Rather it is on us as ...

  the right TV shows and regulating people’s viewing habits will help them to acquire good values. We just hope that TV networks should also be responsible in their programming so that they will not create a negative impact on the viewers, especially the younger ones.   Although these shows depicted an idealized version of American family life, many families in the 1950s were traditional nuclear families. Following the widespread poverty, political uncertainty, and physical separation of the war years, many Americans wanted to settle down, have children, and enjoy the peace and security that family life appeared to offer. During the booming postwar era, a period of optimism and prosperity, the traditional nuclear family flourished. However, the families and lifestyles presented in domestic comedies did not encompass the overall American experience by any stretch of the imagination. As historian Stephanie Coontz points out, “the June Cleaver or Donna Stone homemaker role was no...

 Television Evolution It is no wonder that when television was first becoming America’s medium of choice in the 1940s and ’50s, plenty of thoughtful people questioned the influence it could have on society. Television’s least-common-denominator sensibility concerned many, and some thought the entire entertainment industry was trying to turn the country Communist. Concerns about propaganda abounded. The previous chapter briefly covered the powerful cultural impact films can have. Of concern during the Cold War was that television would take that same power into people’s homes on a platform that was constantly updated and sometimes broadcast live. Just as with film, the battle for control over the influence of television has existed as long as it has been a mass medium. It is difficult to underestimate television’s cultural impact. Besides those who watched television as a threat to spread Communism throughout the West, there were others who were not so radically against television b...

 Nutrition and other elements Because television takes time away from play and exercise activities, children who watch a lot of television are less physically fit and more likely to eat high fat and high energy snack foods. Television viewing makes a substantial contribution to obesity because prime time commercials promote unhealthy dietary practices. The fat content of advertised products exceeds the current average Canadian diet and nutritional recommendations, and most food advertising is for high calorie foods such as fast foods, candy and presweetened cereals. Commercials for healthy food make up only 4% of the food advertisements shown during children’s viewing time. The number of hours of television viewing also corresponds with an increased relative risk of higher cholesterol levels in children. Television can also contribute to eating disorders in teenage girls, who may emulate the thin role models seen on television. Eating meals while watching television should be disco...

  ·        You Are What You Watch A wave of new social science research shows that the quality of shows can influence us in important ways, shaping our thinking and political preferences, even affecting our cognitive ability. Cognitive ability is a complex characteristic that emerges from interactions between biological dispositions, nutrition and health, parenting behaviors, formal and informal educational opportunities, and culture. Some of the best research has been done on the television program “Sesame Street.” The show, which began in 1969, was meant to develop early literacy, numeracy and emotional skills for children of preschool age. A detailed analysis of the show’s content in its first and second years reveals that 80 percent of the program was dedicated to those goals, with the rest meant to entertain. Almost all (93 percent) parents of children in the experimental group reported that their children subsequently watched the show, compared w...

 Race and Religion f In addition to race, gender, sexual orientation, and family, television has shaped the way that Americans think about the issue of social class. From the 1950s through the 2000s, most characters in TV programs have been upper-middle-class, professional people, such as doctors, lawyers, journalists, and business owners. Working-class and poor characters have appeared much more rarely, and they have often been portrayed in a negative manner. TV programs have often portrayed working-class men—such as Archie Bunker of  All in the Family  or Homer Simpson of  The Simpsons —as selfish, immature clowns who have trouble seeing other people's points of view. By contrast, the women in working-class TV families have tended to be more intelligent and sensible than the men. But in the case of middle-class families depicted on television, the fathers and mothers are more likely to be presented as equally mature and responsible parents. In a similar way, televi...

  ·        Its Importance During the 1970s, television program ratings began using such viewer characteristics as age, income, education, and ethnicity to break down the mass audience into smaller groups. Once the networks could collect more detailed data about the audience, they began creating programs to appeal to specific groups. Around this time, the networks also shifted their general focus away from older, rural viewers and toward younger, urban viewers, who were more likely to spend money on sponsors' products. This change in audience focus led the networks to tackle more frequently debated issues in their programs. Another important minority show of the 1970s was  Good Times , which aired on CBS for five years beginning in 1974. This situation comedy focused on the struggles of an African American family living in an inner-city apartment building. Each week the Evans family relied on love and humor to overcome discrimination, unemploym...

  Television Impact on Society Introduction TV is a constant presence in most Americans' lives. With its fast-moving, visually interesting, highly entertaining style, it commands many people's attention for several hours each day. Studies have shown that television competes with other sources of human interaction—such as family, friends, church, and school—in helping young people develop values and form ideas about the world around them. It also influences viewers' attitudes and beliefs about themselves, as well as about people from other social, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. Between the 1940s and 2000s, commercial television had a profound and wide-ranging impact on American society and culture. It influenced the way that people think about such important social issues as race, gender, and class. It played an important role in the political process, particularly in shaping national election campaigns. TV programs and commercials have also been mentioned as major fact...