A Few Thoughts

From the past on television

By Sandy Compton
Reader Columnist

In the face of the media storm of the last few weeks, one of my editors asked me for something written before the internet took over our lives. Here ’tis, only slightly modified. 

When I was 9 years old, we got a television and three grainy avenues of information gained a path of infiltration into our house. 

The basic three — ABC, CBS and NBC – beamed out of Spokane and bounced around the Cabinets and Bitterroots before they got to our house. In spite of my father’s best efforts, the aerial was never well enough situated to give us a clear view. We could almost see Channel 2 and just about make out Channel 6, but the best reception was from KXLY Channel 4, then the CBS affiliate in Spokane. 

We watched Captain Kangaroo in the morning, Wallaby Jack in the afternoon and gathered around for the Starlit Stairway on Saturday night. KXLY and KREM switched affiliations sometime in the past half a century. I can’t remember when, and it doesn’t matter much anyway. They all look alike.

I confess. I don’t own a television. One of my favorite songs is “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On),” and my second favorite bumper sticker — after “Just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you” — is “Kill Your TV.”

Though I have sometimes figured a brick would be handy to keep on the coffee table, I don’t advocate the violent death of televisions. Televisions are easy to kill peacefully. Unplug ’em. Take them out to the garage. Have a yard sale. Give them to someone you don’t like. 

Second, as satisfying as it might be to kill your TV with a baseball bat, flying glass is hard on humans and pets. 

Third, it’s not the television’s fault, after all. The television is just a poor, innocent, misused tool. The stuff we get from television (I use the word “stuff” because this is a family newspaper) is our fault. We let it into our homes. We leave it on through dinner. We buy the stuff (there’s that word again) the sponsors want us to buy, so they figure their advertising works and they look at the programming the advertising runs with and they figure that works, too. 

So, we keep getting the same stuff. 

You know what? It is about 85% awful stuff. 

If you are a thinking, caring, loving human being, I challenge you to sit down and watch an evening of primetime programming and tell me at the end what you learned.

Early on, you will learn that it is acceptable for children to be disrespectful, cynical, rude and obsessed with sex. Later in the evening, you will learn that it is acceptable for adults to be disrespectful, cynical, rude and obsessed with sex. You will learn that the world is fraught with vile monsters, human and otherwise, whose very purpose is to make life and death miserable for as many other beings as possible and then die in the most explicitly horrific manner that can be imagined. 

By watching the “tell-all” shows, you will learn that many of the people who bring us the “stuff” on television — as actors, producers, writers, directors and sponsors  —are disrespectful, cynical, rude and obsessed with sex. (Is there an echo in here?) Oh, and money. I nearly forgot about the “obsessed with money” thing.

So, what’s my point, you ask.

My point is this: Why on Earth do we allow that kind of imagery into our lives every day? How can we expect our children to have any hope of a sane world when we constantly import insanity into our living rooms? 

Television is probably the second-most powerful teaching tool in the world today. Computers are third* and gaining fast, especially in the realm of virtual insanity. I am a writer and not a censor by nature, but there are some computer games out there that I would burn rather than let them in my home. 

(*Computers and cell phones have since surpassed television, which now has 570 channels, and there’s still nothing on.)

Our only hope for dominance over television and computers lies in the most powerful teaching tool available, and that is our own example to the children in our lives. That is the fourth reason that I don’t advocate violence against television. What are we telling a kid by using a rock or a shotgun to turn off the set? Show them something really useful. Show them how to stand up, and unplug it. 

As my mother used to say when cartoons were over on Saturday morning in the good old days of three fuzzy choices, “Hey, it’s nice outside.”

It’s still nice outside. Unplug and get out there. 

Sandy Compton has been living without a television since 1978. His latest book is Alex’s Restaurant, available at Sandpoint Books on Second Avenue, the Sanders County Ledger, at bluecreekpress.com/books and amazon.com.