In praise of TV

I was reading about the book “Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter" by "Steven Johnson". SJ contends that “the most debased forms of mass diversion”, that includes television, sharpens mental skills and makes people smarter. He makes a reasonably good case about something that I have come to realise over the last few years myself.

I used to be a pre-TV era-book-loving-high-brow sort of person who regarded watching television as an activity meant purely for lower forms of life. Over the years, somehow (and by that I mean cable TV) I started watching more and more television. I have now reached a stage where I wake up, switch on the TV and brush my teeth while watching something or the other. This is no exaggeration, I actually do this.

I have, from time to time, questioned the amount of time that I spend watching TV. However, what is to be really questioned is not how much time I spend watching TV but rather what I could do if I was not watching TV. I am gainfully employed. I write occasionally. I read 5-8 hours a day. I read several newspapers, magazines, books-fiction & non-fiction. This is as much a person can do before reaching a point of diminishing marginal returns, intellectually speaking. After all this, I just need some entertainment.

And television is an incomparable form of entertainment. It is there when you wake up and when you go to bed. It is right there when you get home. You don't need to get dressed to watch TV. Very often, it is quite the contrary. You don't need to call and collect a bunch of friends. You don't even need to get out of bed, if you have had the forethought to place your set strategically so that it is the first thing you see when you wake up. You can multitask like the dickens when watching TV Unlike if you are watching a movie or at a theatrical performance. I’d look dashed silly if I tried to brush my teeth while in a theatre.

I have now joyfully given into the pleasures that only a fellow TVholic, someone who has watched an episode of friends for the 57th time and still laughed out aloud, can really comprehend. Besides, TV is not all about entertainment based programmes. The choice is wide and all encompassing. I do spend at least some time watching excellent news, travel, technology, literature and history based programmes. So, I have been educated, informed, entertained and it is definitely time well spent. So, to all ye who feel guilty about watching too much TV, if you have done what you are supposed to, there is nothing better that you can do than settle down in front of the TV. You would have enjoyed yourself and will be smarter when you are done. Could it be any better?

I still pause to think a little bit about my TVholicism when I watch something like “king of queens”. But, if I did not switch channels thirty seconds after seeing a big guy delivering packages, it is really only my fault. It is this occasional thoughtless watching of programmes with no redeeming features whatsoever that is the sole downside. In conclusion, all I can say is that, in the name of St. Clare, let’s all watch more TV and God bless John Logie Baird.