4.
 Television's
variety becomes a narcotic,
not a stimulus.
Its serial, kaleidoscopic
exposures
force us to follow its lead. The viewer is on a perpetual
guided tour: 30 minutes at the museum, 30 at the cathedral,
30 for a drink, then back on the bus to the next attraction
-- except on television, typically, the spans
allotted
are on the order of minutes or seconds, and the chosen
delights are more often car crashes and people killing
one another. In
short, a lot of television usurps
one of the most precious of all human gifts,
the ability to focus your attention yourself, rather
than just passively surrender it.
5.
Capturing
your attention -- and holding it -- is the
prime motive of most television programming and
enhances
its role as a profitable advertising vehicle.
Programmers live in constant fear of losing anyone's
attention -- anyone's. The surest way to avoid doing
so is to keep everything brief, not to strain
the attention of anyone but instead to provide constant
stimulation
through variety, novelty,
action and movement. Quite simply, television operates
on the appeal to the short attention span.
6.
It is simply the easiest way out. But it has come to
be regarded as a given, as inherent in the medium itself;
as an
imperative, as though General Sarnoff, or one of
the other august
pioneers of video, had bequeathed
to us tablets
of stone
commanding that nothing in television shall ever
require more than a few moments' concentration.
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