Speaking of television, Marshall McLuhan once famously said “the medium is the message” (in his book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964).
I’m not so sure. Nobody much watches television anymore.
I’m not certain how or when this happened. I still view events, like certain football games, or impending weather calamities including hurricanes (when I lived on the Gulf Coast) and blizzards. But I don’t watch television.
As a kid, I loved it. TV came to our house when I was
eleven. After some debate, the old man broke down and bought a set two weeks before broadcasting started. For two weeks my siblings and I sat enthralled night after night watching the Indian.
Finally the broadcasts started, but only from 4 PM to 11. It was fuzzy, black and white, but the CONTENT was great. Ed Sullivan, George & Gracie, the Twilight Zone. Scripts written by accomplished writers, parts filled by competent actors. Andy Griffith, Barney Fife. News of what was actually happening: the Kennedy assassination, the moon shot. There was only one channel at first – but hell, it was BROADcasting!
•••
In the next room my sleek, black plasma TV sits, plugged in to 300 odd channels of high definition garbage, silent.
I don’t think I turned it on this weekend. Nothing to watch unless your tastes run to reruns of fatuous, ignorant overweight proletarians swapping wives, or desperately bored housewives expressing their ennui by fucking every available male in the seven county area, “news” that consists of all the blood and guts local highways can manufacture, the ersatz “lives” of vacuous celebrities whose mission it is to live a virtual fantasy existence for gapemouthed drooling followers who have no lives of their own and the fatuous political opinions of those who favor the regime du jour.
We look forward to the Super Bowl, a two hour game which will take four and a half hours to play out, interposed with endless beer commercials and fluff pieces on the community service efforts of newly minted centimillionaires with African names and diamond earrings. Soon we will get the Hollywood Hand Jobs; the Golden Globes, The Grammies, all culminating in that el supremo jerkfest: the Academy Awards.
Yawn. When was the last time the awards went to a movie you enjoyed? When was the last time the awards went to a movie you actually saw?
In airports and waiting rooms everywhere the ubiquitous flat-screens blather on, but no one capable of suppressing the impulse to fart is watching. Instead, they are all plugged in to iPhones and laptops now; exchanging ideas, publishing content, buying and selling goods or catching up with friends.
The newstands are empty, no one trusts the NY Times. I recall being amused by how the Weekend Magazine section in the Times juxtaposed articles on starving orphans and cute little black dresses for only $3000.
It’s not funny anymore.
My Old Man bought the second TV set in Fullerton out of the McMahan store window in 1947. It was a 12″ Philco and it set him back $1,200. He was making $85 dollars a week at the time.
The Old Man had to call them up a couple of vtimes, because dozens of vpeople were standing outside the store, watching the TV throgh the window, until the store closed at 9 pm every night.
After it did arrive, and they set it up, we had complete strangers knock on the door, asking if they could come in and witch TV?
They would sit all day and watch the Indian test pattern, not moving a muscle, until programing started at 5 pm on the two L.A. channels.
When NBC, channel 4 televised the 1st Rose Bowl Game in 1952, I made a killing! I charged $0.50c at the door and the house was SRO.
After that, Showbiz wasn’t my whole life, but I must admit, it became a very big part of my life.
Yer pal, Ferrari Bubba