Four Arguments for The Elimination of Television

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We were offered the charismatic Western hero, charming and brave though an underdog: Reagan. The truth-saying revivalist in corporate packaging: Carter. The guru, speaking aphorisms, standing for a new, albeit aggressive, consciousness like David Carradine's Kung Fu hero: Brown. The old reliable, trusted, venerable warrior in the image of Cronkite: Humphrey. And the President, a television image merely by virtue of being President, investing himself with an apparent authority based solely on that image: Ford.

All of the candidates found their votegetting power in their images and left content out as confusing and irrelevant. They were correct to do this. As we shall see, a campaign run on content could not possibly work on television.

Carter learned the lesson well. In May 1977, The New York Times released an entertaining Carter memo which showed that his organization consciously formalized his reelection plans to emphasize style over content. Carter already uses television as it has never been used before, delivering his homespun appeals directly to the people at home in their living rooms before dealing with Congress or journalists. His talents for leadership, already sharpened from the evangelist model he started with, are growing with his knowledge of technology.

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During the years that television was coming into its own as the central factor in American personal and political life, its basic nature and the effects it had on human beings and their institutions were rarely examined. The problems that people did discuss were concentrated in three main areas: commercialism, access and programming.

Thinking that television could be reformed so that its potential for good would be realized, media reformers sought new laws, government control and regulatory policies. I was among the media workers who fought to limit the domination of advertisers and the effect of advertising on network policies. We worked to offset the emphasis on ratings, an emphasis detrimental to the needs of the public. Many of us fought for access channels so community groups could offer an occasional alternative to the consumer society. We hoped that in this way all segments of society, and all points of view, would gain access to the public mind, fulfilling what looked like a democratic potential of the medium.

Meanwhile, others fought on other fronts. Psychologists, parents' groups and educators lobbied against the dominance of sensational, superficial, irrelevant and violent programs. They sought programs with "prosocial values." They especially wanted new emphasis on humanistic and educational shows for children. These groups saw no reason why such values as cooperation, loving and caring could not be just as appropriate for television programming as were violence and competition.

It went on and on. Historians lobbied for more documentaries, believing that television had no greater inherent limits to its ability to present historical truth than the media that had preceded it. They succeeded in getting legislation requiring that TV networks permanently store their news and documentary footage. Now we can look to a future in which the present era will be understood in terms of the television treatment of it.

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