'TV bad,' states professor of obvious (tv bad) 5.21.02

Every week, kids spend an average of 40 hours with TV, Internet and video games, according to Stanford University professor James Steyer, author of "The Other Parent," which breaks down media culture into who watches what when and how much while lamenting what they could be doing otherwise.
The shocking comparison is that kids spend about 30 hours per week in school and only about 17 hours with their parents, but let's face it, most of that time is spent talking about last nights episode of "Friends."
Who would have guessed TV, video games and the Internet were interfering with our daily human interactions? As the great Leonard Cohen said, "Everybody knows."
In an interview with Paula Zahn on CNN, Steyer, who has either a doctorate in sociology or a masters in the obvious, quantified what we all suspected but were afraid to acknowledge: kids watch too much TV.
Steyer then said a few derogatory things about how family hour is now as dirty as all the other hours. It's a chaotic free-for-all! Nail crooked boards over the windows and get your squirrel gun, Johnny; it's bedlam!
Personally, I am not bothered by the anything-goes attitude on TV. Show for show, programming is much higher in quality today than when I grew up watching "Three's Company" and "The Dukes of Hazzard." Even favorites like "The Incredible Hulk" and "Battlestart Galactica" were pretty much dreck compared to "Enterprise," "ER," "Seinfeld," "The X-Files" and the show that never slows down, "The Simpsons."
I should nt be surprised to see Steyer talking about the kids, they sell and a media savvy Stanford prof is going to know how to move his product. But media overindulgence, in spite of the benefits of the information age, is bad for people all ages and for a variety of reasons.
I use myself as an example of the worst humanity has to offer. Take from it what you will.
For one, staring at a TV or a monitor all day long drives a wedge between you and other human beings. I am pretty much an anti-social misanthrope and when I think about getting out versus staying home to watch "Dr. Who" or "SNL," I often take the chair most traveled.
The characters on long-running series act as surrogates for human contact. These people are like friends we tune in to catch up with and when we actually catch up with old friends, how much time do we spend talking about TV?
Take all this recent hullaballoo over old shows. Twenty years of Must See TV, 30 years of MASH, 50 years of CBS, 75 years of NBC, the Cosby reunion, the Laverne & Shirley reunion, Mary Tyler Moore, Carol Burnett and the list goes on.
Add to that the number of series and characters that were killed off in a huge display of emotion to tear-jerker season finales and you get a melange of fpre-fab angst over people and places that don't exist.
It's like losing family members. I watched the 20 or 30 episodes NBC took to kill off Mark Green from "ER." It was like a TV-14 snuff film. The guy leaves the ER for the last time, then there was the letter, then we get to watch him die in Hawaii while "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" plays and all our favorite characters past and present (minus George Clooney whose career will no doubt suffer for his insolence) wept for our entertainment.
I believe it is wrong to invest in these characters and I STILL do it in spite of the fact that I am almost relieved when summer reruns start and I feel like I don't have to keep up any more.
And the news? It is pretty safe to say the news is just another form of entertainment designed to get you to buy stuff. News segments themselves are commercials. How much air time has been devoted to Vanilla Coke? It dominated "The Today Show." If Coke didn't pay NBC millions, I'd like to know why.
"The Today Show" is pretty light fare, which ALMOST makes that kind of schilling OK, but CNN Headline News has gotten almost as bad as they emulate FOXNews. I don't know who these chipper pep club rejects are (with the exception of Andrea Thompson who was more convincing as a telepath on "Babylon 5" than as a CNN anchor) who banter through the news like it's a coffe klatch and I don't WANT to know. I want the news.
I don't need to wake up to a smiling face and expensive eye jobs. Give me Walter Kronkite, Harry Reasoner and Ed Murrow and dump these 23-year-old cheerleaders back at the frat house they came from.
The Internet is often seen as Pandora's box revealing the world's evils to unsuspecting youth, but at least it is closer to reading a book than TV. Video games may be violent time wasters, but their possession is not practically a necessity like TV ownership. Be honest, most of us look at people who don't let their kids watch ANY TV as abusive and freakish and that's if we can find anyone like that any more.
Media overload is bad for kids, but in our desire to root out everything that might harm them, we have forgotten we are susceptible as well. Endless hours paying attention to media minutiae is time better spent focused on ourselves, our families and our friends.
- Greg Jerrett is a Nonpareil staff writer. His column runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays. He may be contacted at 328-1811, Ext. 279, or by e-mail at gjerrett@nonpareilonline.com.