Americans spend an estimated 9 years watching television in their lifetime. I was shocked to learn such a thing. Nine whole years wasted? Here is a list of things that you could do in that amount of time:
- Write 9 novels
- Do some serious environmental campaigns
- Travel the world
- Get a Ph.D. or two
- Help others
- Work at nine different animal shelters-- one per year
- Build a bunch of eco-friendly houses
- Read 450 books (if you read 50 books per year, that is)
- Become a marathon-runner
- Campaign and become the Prime Minister of Canada (sorry, Canadians only)
- Accomplish your dreams!
Please don't fall under the television's influence. Instead, occupy yourself with other activities like reading or learning an instrument. It'll leave you feeling more fulfilled when you do an activity that takes a bit of effort.
Oh, and what'll you do with all those TVs lying around your house? How about donate them? That way, less people will go out and buy brand-new television sets.
Let's take the world-- our worlds-- back from the ruthless clutches of TV.
Hey!
Ahoy!
(The television is a dangerous toy.)
Avast!
Shiver me timbers!
(TV is not for free-thinkers!)
Yo!
Heave-ho!
(Into the dump the TV goes!)
I know it's only Thursday, but I'll be pretty busy tomorrow, so I thought I'd post today instead.
Why do you think things evolved this way? Who would benefit from convincing us to watch so much TV?
ReplyDeleteWell, the television stations, I suppose. And another reason is that television is so addictive that they don't have to advertise all that much!
ReplyDeleteI don't understand your reasoning, how do the television stations benefit?
ReplyDeleteIn most commercial operations the benefit is usually measured in terms of money. How does a television station make its money? Who pays for TV? How does a TV station make money?
With tobacco companies it is easy to see, they addict you to tobacco forcing you to buy more of their product. But it is not so clear to me how this works in the case of TV.
Well, I've heard that television stations will issue devices that track how much television people watch and what stations people frequent. (The people who have one know about it, of course.) Then, once they have this data, they can go to advertising companies and tell them, "60 percent of television viewers watch our channel for at least 30 minutes a day!" (Or whatever statistic they can use from their data.) Then the advertisers will pay the television station a fee to advertise on their channels.
ReplyDeleteRecently, however, there has been a concern about DVRs giving people the opportunity to skip over commercials. So now the advertisers want to have their product advertised in the actual plotline of the TV show, with the characters using the product.
Another way they benefit by us watching TV is that then we'll go on Internet chatrooms and tell our friends about our favourite TV shows. Then, they hope, some people will purchase the seasons they missed on DVD. I guess it really all goes back to money, for these companies.
I hope that answers your question better.