Viewing the box: television has become a pervasive part of our lives. Ninqy-nine percent of Canadian households have at least one TV set, and 56% of Canadians now use the Internet. For now, the Internet cannot talk to television; soon, that will change. (Media - Television).

Whatever its limitations, as a television-watching culture, our lives are inevitably influenced by the box. Much of our world is seen through the TV set - from U.S. President John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Texas (1963) to the Moon landing (1969), from the collapse of the Berlin Wall (1989) to the ice storm in Quebec (1998), from anti-globalization protests (1999-2001) to terrorist attacks on the United States. Television has made events in the rest of the world a part of our lives to the point that some observers say it has created a news environment in which the difference between human tragedy and high entertainment is minimal.

The name of the game in television is ratings; the more people who watch a show the bigger the advertising dollars. That can turn news stories into high drama, as it did with 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez, a Cuban boy who was rescued in November 1999 from an inner tube in waters off Florida's Fort Lauderdale. Relentless media attention helped turn the child's tragic story into a circus involving months of legal battles and political opportunism. It started when he left Cuba illegally with his mother who drowned when the boat they were on sank. Elian was placed in the care of his great uncle in Miami Beach, Florida. However, his father in Cuba appealed to the Cuban government to help ensure his son's return. A legal battle followed that lasted seven months, and involved angry debate between anti-communists who thought Elian should stay at his uncle's in Miami, and U.S. and international laws that ruled his place was with his father in Cuba. Finally, in June 2000 Elian was returned to his father.

It's a small step from this kind of "news" coverage to "reality" TV, with programs such as Survivor, where ordinary people are placed under the TV microscope, and viewers can't seem to get enough. Remarkably, the exploits of the Survivor "cast" became front-page news; remember, this was a created for television show, not news. As one person wrote in a letter to the editor of The Globe and Mail: "Your coverage as news of the Survivor [final episode] is without a doubt the most depressing statement about the state of journalism today that I have encountered in a lifetime spent in this field." Other readers wrote: "The only thing more disconcerting than the success of Survivor is the fact that it took front-page priority over real news, such as the devastating plane crash in the Persian Gulf, or the changes made to Canadian health care ..." and, "... An item about a trashy TV show displaces the story of a crashed airliner with 143 dead ... Real news on the front page, please."

American media expert George Gerbner spent years researching how the mass media portrays American culture as head of the Cultural Indicators Project at the University of Pennsylvania. In a conversation published in Utne Reader in 1997, Mr. Gerbner said "television programming is getting worse very rapidly because with every merger staffs are reduced and new entries are denied ... It's very peculiar, because people say we have all these channels now. But today, more channels are owned by fewer companies, and you get pretty much the same representation of men and women, rich and poor, young and old."

In 1996, Mr. Gerbner founded the Cultural Environment Movement. The movement is a coalition of more than 150 individuals and organizations dedicated to reclaiming control of world media, which he says has, "drifted out of democratic reach" because of global consolidation.

Kalle Lash, editor of Vancouver-based Adbusters magazine, also thinks television offers little of merit. Mr. Lasn thinks watching TV isolates us; that it's better to go for a hike with a friend than to watch nature shows on TV. In a newspaper article he cites a Stanford University study released in 2000 that found the Internet also "steals time normally spent with other human beings." He quotes the study's principal investigator, Norman Nie, who told The New York Times. "When you spend your time on the Internet, you don't hear a human voice and you never get a hug."

Mr. Lasn isn't suggesting that TV and the Internet are the only things that isolate people in North America. There are other factors including an endless quest for money and the frantic lifestyle this entails. Generally, it all "creates an inner sense of social and spiritual emptiness." Advertisers compound the situation by suggesting that their products will solve all our troubles and "make us happy and whole again."

Television distorts our views in other ways as well. One survey in the United States found that college students who were dedicated soap opera viewers tended to overestimate the number of actual married couples who had been involved in extramarital affairs, been divorced, and women who aborted fetuses.

A similar result was found when a survey questioned people about the role of the elderly in our society. Because elderly people often are portrayed negatively on television, heavy viewers (especially young people) are in dined to see elderly people in a negative light. So, television can even change the amount and quality of interaction between generations, undermining relationships we should value. Some findings suggest that watching too much TV is not only a source of alienation among people; it can increase depression in individuals as well.

Emotional and psychological side effects of television watching are only part of the picture: there are also many physical side effects, including obesity, sleep deprivation, and sensory development. While each may only have a slight impact, some researchers believe the cumulative effect is life altering.

One observer suggests that heavy television viewers exhibit five to six dependency symptoms - two more than necessary for a clinical diagnosis of substance abuse:

* using TV as a sedative;

* indiscriminate viewing;

* feeling loss of control while viewing;

* feeling angry with oneself for watching too much;

* inability to stop watching;

* feeling miserable when kept from watching.

Dr. Sally Ward, a British expert on child development has concerns as well. She has discovered there is a link between the hours children are exposed to television and their inability to speak: "I have seen children of two-and-a-half with virtually no ability to understand words."

But television isn't all bad. John Doyle wrote in The Globe and Mail in May 2001 that, "television is taken for granted, patronized, and dismissed," but he doesn't think it should be because it "occupies an extraordinarily central place in our society. [It] is good, it is often art and it should never be ignored ..." He also believes: "It's been a long time since TV was all rubbish, all the time ..."

Television remains the dominant medium of information and entertainment of our age. Media visionary Marshall McLuhan described it as an intensely visual story-telling medium that complements print by getting the same messages through to people in a different way.

As Gemini Award-winning producer Julian Sher sees it, television has the potential to "... bind a country together in a moment of crisis. It can also grab peoples' emotions and the world's attention to expose injustices with a sense of urgency and immediacy that only TV does well ..."

Television is undergoing major changes as it goes digital, giving us the advantages of better picture and sound quality, more channels, interactive features, and electronic program guides. With add-ons, people can watch whatever they like whenever they like. You'll be able to download anything from anywhere directly into you TV. Digital also allows broadcasters to squeeze a lot more channels into the same space - up to 600 channels compared to conventional analog cable carrying fewer than 100. Meanwhile, many are asking who's going to be watching all these channels. In fact, it's widely agreed that audience numbers initially will be small along with advertising revenue. It's hard to tell how quickly audience figures will grow but optimists think there could be as many as five million digital TV households within three years.

The problem is that while the number of channels has increased dramatically over the last several years, the number of viewers hasn't. So, the effect of even more channels could be to drive down advertising rates, hence revenue. At the same time, there will be more buyers (many on tight budgets) competing for the best programs, whatever they might be (comedy, drama, documentaries, and films). That means the cost of programming will increase, making the switch to digital an expensive endeavour for the country's broadcasters and cable companies.

For media companies, the big attraction is the interactive ability of digital TV, allowing people to buy goods they see advertised. One research firm has forecast that by 2004, revenues from interactive commerce and advertising will have risen to $8.1 billion in Europe, and to $5 billion in America. But viewers will be offered more than products. They'll be pumping up interactive revenues by betting and playing games: viewers can play games either on a dedicated games channel, or while watching another program. The idea seems to be to add an interactive game to an ordinary program such as a quiz show or sports program. In trials conducted by Two Way TV, a British interactive-TV company, ratings jumped by an average of 30% in peak time, when viewers could also play games.

So far, only about two million of Canada's 10 million television-viewing households watch digital TV via cable set-top boxes and satellite dishes: they pay about $70 per month to do so. But, the digital revolution has started, and it will change our lives. It will change the way we communicate, the way we shop, the way we are entertained.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. According to Professor Seth Feldman, York University's Robarts Chair in Canadian Studies, "The CBC is our largest single cultural organization. Given its size and budget, all of us have a stake in how it is defining - or not defining - what culture itself means in this country." Discuss why it's important to have public broadcasting.

2. Have a TV-free meek. (Kalle Lasn would be proud.) Discuss what participants did instead of watching TV, and whether they felt life was better as a result, or not as good.

FACT FILE

The American Academy of Pediatrics went so far as to formally resolve in 1999 that commercial television was a public health hazard for children.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, funded mostly by the federal government, costs taxpayers less than eight cents per Canadian per day.

The Canadian Radiotelevision and Telecommunications Commission decided in fall 2000 to license nearly 300 new digital channels.

In 1980, each of America's top 20 TV shows was watched by more than a fifth of all households, and the most popular were often seen in more than half of all homes with a TV; now, hit shows are seen by only about 10% of households, and the most popular shows by only about 20%.

Websites

Cultural Environment Movement - http://www. cemnet.org/

Friends of Canadian Broadcasting - http://friendscb.ca

Statistics on Television's Impact - http://www. essential, org/orgs/tvfa/stats. html

Television's Impact on Health - http://www. essential, org/orgs/tvfa/ health.html

RELATED ARTICLE: The seeds of violence.

For all the potentially positive aspects of TV, there are a huge number of critics who blame it for helping to create a more violent society. According to a report in The New York Times newspaper in 1999, hundreds of studies done at top U.S. universities in the last three decades have found at least some link between watching violent movies or television shows and acting aggressively in life. That's not to say every child who watches a lot of violence or plays a lot of violent video games will become violent. There are other considerations, but TV is one factor. One professor estimated that there have been more than 1,000 studies on the effects of media violence (as entertainment or news) done in the last 40 years. All have found a definite link between watching violent entertainment and aggressive behaviour.

Television and movie-studio executives, as well as producers and writers, say the link is too small to warrant the attention paid to these studies: they say that scientists are looking for an easy solution to some of society's problems. It's far easier to censor or restrict entertainment media than to address such problems as reducing poverty, improving child-rearing skills and child care services, or restricting the availability of guns. Others insist that a regular diet of violent viewing over time tells kids that violence is an acceptable way to solve problems.

Television's coverage of violence also influences our perception of just how much violence exists in our lives. Researchers have found a close correlation, not between the actual crime rate and people's perceptions, but between the media's coverage of violent crime and people's perceptions.

Although violent crime has been dropping since 1992, a 1998 Environics poll showed that 75% of Canadians think crime is getting worse: at the same time that the murder rate in Canada was on the decline television coverage of murders went up. As national networks decreased their crime reporting, Canadians started to feel safer. Statistics Canada reported that in 1999, 91% of Canadians were either very or somewhat satisfied with their personal safety, compared with 86% six years earlier.

Television can also distort our understanding of homicides. While only 12% of Canadian homicides were committed by persons unknown to the victim in 2000, 44% of CBC's and 48% of CTV's coverage identified a stranger as the perpetrator. Television news also tends to emphasize homicides that involve firearms, despite the fact that guns were involved in only 3.3% of all violent crimes in the country in 1999. So, even though most people are never victims of violent crime, if TV news over focuses on it, people feel more threatened than they actually are.

RELATED ARTICLE: Public broadcasting versus private.

Public broadcasters receive most of their operating budgets from federal or provincial governments. In Canada the public broadcasting system includes the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as well as several provincial educational broadcasters. CBC television offers national service; educational broadcasters serve specific regions (all, except for Television Northern Canada, are restricted to one province). With the exception of the CBC, public broadcasting doesn't carry advertising, so they schedule pledging breaks in the hope that viewers will help pay the bills.

Most programming on public TV is produced "in-house" by Canadian independent producers. Some programs come from other Canadian broadcasters and foreign program suppliers as well, but foreign shows account for a much smaller percentage of the total programming than in private television.

All public-broadcasting services must be licensed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). In Canada, all educational broadcasters are affiliated under the Association for Tele-Education in Canada.

National and regional networks as well as individual stations in communities across the country make up Canada's private-broadcasting system; most of these stations are owned by large corporations. Unlike the public broadcasters, privately owned broadcasters receive no government funding. They are supported by advertising revenues and, in the case of cable and satellite-delivered services, by consumer subscription fees. Their programming is a mixture of shows produced in-house (by Canadian independent producers), and acquired programming (from other Canadian broadcasters and foreign program suppliers). No matter where their programming comes from, all Canadian private-broadcasting services are responsible under Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) regulations for the content of the programming they broadcast, and they must have a licence from the CRTC.

RELATED ARTICLE: Invasion of the mouse.

As much as many of us like TV, recent research shows that Canadians are spending more time at their computers than the boob tube. TV viewing it seems is at its lowest levels in two decades: on each average person watched 21.6 hours of television a week in 1999, down from a high of 23.5 hours in 1988, according to Statistics Canada. At the same time, the number of households with an Internet user grew to 42% in 1999 from 36% a year earlier.

Children between two and 11 watched an average 15.5 hours a week in 1999, almost 20% less than in 1990. And teenagers, aged 12 to 17, watched 8% less TV in 1999 than they did in 1990. But the teens like to multi-task: a survey of 1,000 teenaged Internet users showed 34% watch TV while using the Internet. By December 2000, Canadians spent a monthly average of 753 minutes on-line, up from 554 minutes the previous December.

The drop in television viewing among young people in the U.S. has been described as alarming. Since 1985, the average number of hours of TV watched by Americans under 18 has fallen by more than 20%, partly in favour of surfing the Internet.