TV Culture

My morning started with a 8 year old boy reduced to tears and clutching his ear. He and his sister have had a doozy of a head cold for the last four days so it didn't surprise me that he had developed an ear infection. I tried drops that we had here at the house but judging from his cries they were not working so off to the walk in clinic we went.

The wait was long, over an hour but for the forty or so chairs that were filled with bodies the wait wasn't so bad. They had their television. A large screen tv was mounted to the wall, locked on a particular channel (not even a Canadian one) and everyone was content to stare up at it for hours on end, not matter what ridiculous day time program was running. I also noticed most of the people were middle aged and younger.

The same was true for the waiting room at the hospital when I went in for my surgery last week. That time I did watch, but who could blame me, my favourite show Road To Avonlea was on. Not as many people paid attention in that waiting room though. The average age must have been over 55 (myself the only exception). I wonder if it's a generational thing. Because anyone in the forties or under would have grown up with television, even raised their own kids with the devise as babysitter.

I love movies, and the odd program and for 4 years we lived without cable preferring to search out certain shows on the internet. Over recent years our rooster of preferred shows kept getting longer and longer. Television stations were adding innumerable programs to their websites allowing us to watch what we wanted, when we wanted and our daily average kept getting higher and higher. When we moved here we caved under the pressure of climbing bandwidth charges from our internet provider and ordered cable.

I try to keep TV watching at bay but admit I am weak. I could do better. In some ways I wish I could go back to four years ago when we ditched cable with defiance and gave the kids a book when they said they were bored. To be honest, I like TV but it concerns me that doctors waiting rooms, restaurants and mini vans are becoming acceptable places for screen time. What happened to the good old game of "I spy" while waiting for the doctor? Or pre-planning and bringing a book? Maybe, just maybe we could also become better at talking to each other, instead of looking up in the corner slack-jawed and bug-eyed.

We are one step closer to turning into that Wall-E movie, cruising around on hovering chairs, illumiinated screens two inches from our faces and a gigantic soda at our side. When will enough be enough?