Saturday, April 6, 2024

TELEVISION COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH MORE

Fifty years ago, I trained in radio and television arts. I briefly worked in both before moving to the federal government to work in community development. Multiple sclerosis (diagnosed at 30) forced me into medical retirement at the age of 38. 

But my love for television's potential continued: Not in what it turned out to be, but what it could have been. Television could have been so much more than the programming wasteland of mediocre formula sitcoms and reality shows (that are not real). Television should have been about education not the indoctrination of liberal agendas. 

Television could have been a constructive tool to promote community, human development and social cohesion. It could have been a tool dedicated to educating children and adults about the arts, sciences, history, classics in literature, ... programming that people can trust not to have a political bias or promote special agendas such as sexual orientation and gender identification (SOGI). The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and PBS used to do that, or at least they tried. 

I'm still an optimist, even when there is no reason to be. If the public had demanded better from television networks, they would have done better. Television decision-makers did not use their opportunity wisely. Today's social media is making network television irrelevant.





In 1969, Mr. Rogers saved public television


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