Was TV better back then?

I'm winding down watching some mindless tv program - - CNN news actually! - - wishing I could "watch" the Internet, as I listen to it, read it, chat with it.....

And the CNN news reporter is saying that the American Academy of Physicians recommends no child under 2 watch any tv. So the CNN guy says, "Well that's unrealistic, so what Should kids watch?"  And I'm flabbergasted.

Parents are told the Internet is bad for their kids, but even when doctors say tv is bad for kids, we shrug it off. So then Julie and I discuss why we used to watch more television 20 years ago than we do today (we've gotten rid of 3 out of 4 tv sets, cut our cable bill in half).

Theories:
* We lived in Kansas, nothing else to do.
* We didn't have money to do anything else.
* We worked longer, had kids to raise, no energy for anything else.
* TV WAS BETTER BACK THEN.

What do you think? Was TV better back then?

Comments

[Anne Coppenhaver]

And there are many "hangovers" from those days for some of us boomer's that were reinforced by TV "back then" including stereotypes of the roles of women and men, and ideas such as the only people worth paying attention to are white, middle class (at least) and conventional. After all, that was what you saw on TV ... the box that purported to show us "the world." So, for all it's mindlessness, at least today I can choose to watch BBC news, a discussion of the Gospel of Judas, or how to get fit in my living room ... if I choose. Those were not choices that I could make "back then." But the most interesting development in our TV watching (and in my house we watch more because of it) is the digital recorder. Now, I can easily refuse to watch ANY show until I want to, without commercial interruption (fast forwarding), and stopping for however long a break I wish to make, whenever I want to make it. The DVR helps to make that transition for me of a "push" technology being (somewhat) transformed into something that I "pull." In fact, with the DVR, I set up to record "all episodes" or one, saving it "until I erase" or until the next episode ... I decide. What will they think of next?

[Terry Newman]

I think we were less sophisticated in those days, and certainly didn't have access to as much information as we could glean from watching TV so I think we thought it was good TV. And after a long day of math, science, etc., it was definitely good to sit down and watch an episode of "Gidget" and see what Moon-Doggie was doing.

[Daniel Bednar]

How, exactly, are we choosing to define "better?" Having just finished the book _Everything Bad is Good for You_, I'm in favor of the theory that TV has actually improved, at least in helping us in our problem-solving abilities. As for not watching as much TV today, well, isn't that also part of the Nine Shift phenomenon? TV is "push" entertainment, while the Internet is "pull" entertainment.

[Graham Wegner]

I think TV was the only thing back then. The ratio of crud to quality probably hasn't changed too much.