Monday, December 7, 2009

One Nation, Under Television And Obsession.

By Matthew Kerridge

The rating company A. C. Nielsen, in doing its market research has compiled numbers stating the average American citizen, during a sixty-five year life will have spent just over nine full years watching a television. This can translate into nearly 28 hours of TV watching per week and up near a full two months viewing per year! A very simple indication of has become our national obsession.

Households of the United States have attained the highest TV ownership rate on the earth today per-capita. These numbers are over ninety-nine percent in owning at minimum one, and nearing an average of three TV sets being in each home. These sets are usually turned on, (whether they are watched or not) for periods of almost seven solid hours per day at average, and thus the term of couch potato being used is used regularly. Not too far from truth 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 was actually made available commercially during the early nineteen-thirties. With the first full and actual public broadcasts being made in nineteen thirty-six from the Olympic Games that were held in Berlin Germany. These were made to government run stations both in that city, and that of Leipzig as well. The broadcasts availed the games to viewing for the first time to any nations populace. Due mainly to the sheer cost of them, and a general lack of programming, the TV did not make any real headway into regular peoples homes until after world war two during the nineteen-fifties and early sixties.

With the growing sales of sets, the television developed into an unmatched advertising tool as well. Broadcasters currently, use thirty percent or more of time for advertising usage. The average child in the United States alone, sees nearly twenty thousand thirty second commercials per year. The result effects manufacturers, retailers, and they base of the economy itself. Ask yourself if you would have been at that fast food outlet today if not for the children's prodding of you, and their will to get the new toy offered with a meal.

The average American youth spends around nine hundred hours per year in school. That same child spends nearly seventeen hundred hours watching a television in that same year! Since the nineteen-seventies, the disparity in these numbers has been growing steadily. With the addition of inventions like the VCR, DVD, Blu-Ray, DVR and the like we have added to these already high numbers in recent years.

The television is a valuable tool of communication, learning, and development. The over use of it as a distraction is its greatest detriment and flaw. The public needs to be aware of and try to monitor its use in more productive and responsible manner.

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