Four Arguments for The Elimination of Television

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Ecologists assumed television could be a potentially useful tool in expanding knowledge of how our species interacts with natural forces.

Political radicals believed television could stimulate deeper understanding of complex issues.

Indian groups believed it was possible to build sensitivity to their culture and philosophy through TV. They shared this belief with other groups that sought civil rights—blacks, homosexuals, women's groups and so on.

At some point in the early 1970s, I began to be at odds with the assumption that television was the ideal medium for all these groups. I noticed that, unlike commercial advertising messages, many of these alternative views somehow didn't work on television. They lost body, became "flat." Aside from this, it was clear that while the organizations were focusing all their communications efforts through television, they themselves were being negatively affected.

One day in 1971, I raised the point with two different groups. One was seeking the educational reform of colleges, and the other was lobbying for new neighborhood zoning laws.

I told them that I felt their intense desire to attract television coverage was damaging their organizations and that they were failing to get their message through anyway. They were losing their roots, their grounding. I wondered aloud if more wasn't being lost than gained.

The answer was, "Listen, everybody's watching television. We can reach everyone if we handle things the right way."

I pointed out that when a message is squeezed through a twenty-second news spot, so much can be lost that what is left will fail to move anyone enough to make them turn off the set and actually do something. Meanwhile, the viewers will believe that they have learned everything they need to know on that subject and will be bored the next time they hear it.

Each group responded the same way. They brought up the civil rights and antiwar movements. These surely "worked" on television, so what was I trying to say? This stopped the discussion both times.

Only later did I understand that both the civil rights and antiwar movements were exceptions which proved the point. Adopting confrontational tactics in an escalating cycle of action and reaction, they got extensive coverage and became the model for all movements seeking rapid success.

But should all movements use such tactics to get their time on the tube? Were the street demonstrations and violent clashes that produced television coverage for some movements appropriate for neighborhood or educational reformers? For ecologists? For consumer groups? The handicapped? Perhaps so. They certainly brought the cameras out. But what became of their messages when groups did this? What became of the organizations? Finally, what did this suggest about the so-called neutral, or even benign, nature of the medium? Did this not mean that television, in effect, was determining the style and content (or lack thereof) of all political action, that movements were becoming derivative of the needs of the technology?

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