One Nation, Under Television And Obsession.

By Matthew Kerridge

The A. C. Nielsen Co., in doing its research has numbers saying the average American citizen, over a sixty five yr. Lifetime will spend slightly over nine years watching television. This translates to nearly twenty eight hours of watching per week and up a full two months per year in viewing! A simple indicator of our national obsession with them.

United States households have the highest per-capita ownership rate in the world today, with over ninety-nine percent of them owning a minimum of one set, and holding an average of almost three sets in the home. Turning them on, (being watched or not) for nearly seven hours per day at average. When the term couch potato is used, it really is not too far off base is it?

Recent surveys discover sixty percent, (or even more possibly) of the U. S. General population is able to name all of the members from a comedy team like the nineteen-thirties era Three Stooges, but under fifteen percent of that same number surveyed are able to name any three of the sitting Justices of the United States Supreme Court. Modern television viewing habits have been seen as aiding developmentally in this in recent times.

The television became commercially available in the nineteen-thirties. First actual broadcasts being made from the nineteen thirty-six Olympiad in Berlin, Germany to stations in that city as well as Leipzig availing the games for the first time to a nations populace. Due to cost, the lack of programming, et cetera, the television did not make headway into peoples homes until the nineteen-fifties.

With sales growth in TV sets skyrocketing, the television began to develop itself into an advertising tool that remains unmatched. In recent years and currently, broadcasters are using up to a full thirty-percent or even more of their available broadcast time for advertising and sales. The average viewer or young child in the U. S. Today sees as many as twenty thousand or even more, thirty second commercials each and every year. The results can be shown in the effects on our restaurants, retailers, and even manufacturers, at the base of our whole economy itself. If you have been into a chain, or fast-food restaurant recently, and you would NOT have gone but for the children's asking of you, in their quest to get the newest toy or prize offered with a meal you already hold proof.

The average American youth spends nearly nine hundred hours per year in school. Now, comparing this to the fact that the same young child is spending very near, or more than seventeen hundred hours watching a television during the same years time frame! Since the early part of the nineteen-seventies, disparity in numbers like these has been advanced very steadily. Additions of various inventions like these; the DVD, the VCR, Blu-Ray systems, DVR and the like, we are rapidly adding to the already high numbers over recent years.

The television can definitely be used as a valuable tool in learning, tele-communications, and many other things. With its over use as a social crutch, or simple distraction, its greatest flaws and detriments can be seen. The American public needs to be made aware of this and try to monitor viewing for far more productive things. - 30542

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