TV, the solitary sport

I read a book yesterday that consisted of intertwined short stories spanning 30 years that took place in a small Ohio town. The book is called Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock. Its a quick read and very well written. I'm going to highly recommend this book to those of you that might read. This book is also what kept me from an update yesterday.

While reading these stories I came across a couple of mentions of a TV show called Armchair Theater. Originally a British show, it was revived by ABC in the early 70's. The author passingly mentions a characters comfort at knowing that all the neighbors would all be watching the same movie as he was.

Although I'm not old enough to have lived through the time period during which these particular stories took place it did strike a chord in me. You see, I am old enough to remember pre-cable. The cool thing about TV before cable was that if you watched something on TV there was a high percentage chance that you could have a conversation about it with someone the next day. It seemed to bring people together in conversation. Movies of the week or a miniseries were things to tune into because people would be talking about them the next day. While I was in elementary school there were 3 major networks and 3 minor networks. That was it, 6 choices. At the outset of cable there was a company called OnTV. They offered exactly one movie channel. This had a similar effect. Everyone that had OnTV watched the same primetime movie and shared their opinions with friends and family the next day. It was nice.

The advent of cable was spectacular. 100 channels! Specialty chanels, sport channels ad movie channels...it was a TV junkies dream come true. The choices went from 6 to 106. And no two people you knew tuned in to the same thing.

Channel surfing became a more solitary sport. Sure people still watched Monday night football and other top rated TV shows but the choices made it hard to share a viewing experience with others. When I was younger I watched a lot of TV because I could talk about it with others much like I wish I could do now with books

I gave up TV for the most part for a few years finding the programming weak and lacking. Only over the last 4 years or so have I reimmersed myself in television. And although I do find that there is programming I love, I find that its not very often that it's open to discussion with others. Television over the last 20 years has become something you watch and chew over....alone.
Sent via BlackBerry probably from outside Starbucks