• You Are What You Watch

 

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 Secretary of State would be giving the news of national security. The viewer could decide which presentation, which person, seemed the more attractive or instructive. No program would have a patron, every program would enjoy the support of the entire field of advertising, and Dinah Shore could see the U.S.A. in a moving van if she wanted to. I do not sketch the outlines of this dizzying structure to show the solution to the problem of TV, merely to show what the problem really is—or what I think it really is. The problem is how to support the editorial stuff with the advertising stuff without subjecting the viewer to a thousand indignities and without compelling singers and actors and reporters and philosophers to identify themselves with hair sprays, bug sprays, floor wax, and marshmallows. If television advertising were truly in competition with editorial matter, instead of being in command of it, the quality of TV advertising would immediately improve. It would have to, in order to stay alive. A year or so ago, payola was in the news and TV was in the doghouse. Americans were shocked at the way money was being passed around for sly promotional services. But payola strikes me as much less disquieting than pay. Payola has been around since the invention of money; it will always be around because there will always be a new crop of alert characters willing to take money for undercover service. Payola is simply an evil associated with the human character, which is less than perfect. But the steady drift of people from the lively arts into the ranks of advertising is not an evil; it is a mist settling on our pond. The old clarity simply isn’t there anymore. In its place we have the new, big, two-headed man, one mouth speaking his own words, smiling his own smile, the other mouth speaking the words that have been planted, smiling the smile that has been paid for in advance. This is nationally demoralizing.