Kill Your Television
When television first came to be recognized as a tool for implanting images into millions of people's minds simultaneously, idealism reigned. Educators wanted to use it to provide quality, free education to the masses. The dream of many public access channels, full of community programming, began to be tossed around. Then reality set in.
Television programs cost quite a bit of money to produce so naturally the producers wanted to subsidize this cost. They looked to advertisers. By letting advertisers have the chance to bring their message to the program's audience the producers could charge a fee. Quickly thereafter the producers began to realize that not only could they pay for the cost of the program, they could also make a healthy profit. Right then and there any dreams of an educational, community based television framework died a horrible capitalist death. The second money was involved, only the programs with "entertainment" value could turn a profit. This was usually low brow situation comedies or pseudo-reality shows that had no inherent value beyond "entertaining" in their oh so mindless fashion. Nobody wanted to watch free educational programming because it was "boring." Now we pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of this "boring" education. Nobody wanted to watch programs made by members of their community because they were lo-fi and didn't have any cool special effects or big breasted women.
Television was now, and forever will be, in the hands of the companies that could afford to produce glitzier shows than the common man. Instantly, television was, and is, controlled by the power structure of wealthy corporations with little or no access to the public and even less concern for their well being. Soon the only messages TV was bringing to the viewer were negative stereotypes and those bought by large corporations. These corporations were the only organization that could afford to bring their messages to the public as advertising costs was and are phenomenal. Media costs have outpaced inflation by such a huge margin that it has assured that only the wealthiest marketers can afford it.
The idealistic educators had to ditch their dream of educational programming and be content with one channel that is barely able to keep afloat, let alone attract viewers. Access to the public is also restricted to one channel, which was quickly snapped up by wannabe local networks. Only major cities have viable public access programming made by members of the community but it is still restricted to one channel, just as the educators are.
Television had possibilities at its initial conception. Here is an informational tool that could have provided universal free education as well as programs made by people who shared your neighborhood. Now all we have is Friends and Coke telling us they're always Coca-Cola. Television has been perverted into a tool for large corporations to peddle their products to the public. There is no value in television. There is no socially redeeming aspects of it. It is just a tool owned by the power structure, being used to make us mindlessly follow the work-consume pattern of modern life.
There are other aspects of television even more devious than the pushing of products on the citizens. 50% of all media in the U.S. is owned by 6 corporations. That means that 6 corporations control what half of America will see. This includes social agenda setting organizations such as the news being owned by General Electric to programs featuring famous actors smoking, owned or influenced by Phillip Morris. Companies can use television to manufacture trends or tell the public what they should believe in. It is a straight up propaganda tool that makes Nazi Germany propaganda look like tic-tac-toe. We are constantly being manipulated by a machine that is owned, wholly and irrevocably, by the power structure. This is by far the sickest form of social control in existence today yet we love it. The average American works 8 hours a day and sleeps the same amount. What does he do with the other 8? 4 of it are spent watching the domination machine. That means that half of Americans' free time is spent lovingly worshipping the machine that controls us. Kill your television is not just a bumper sticker on some hippie van, it's the battle hymn of the new revolution. Kill your fucking television.
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