My cable went down last week. I mean really went down. The repair guy shook his head, saying someone who could “get into the wall” was needed. I gaped at him. My TV needs cable. Getting a broadcast signal is beyond its ability, and I watch TV for a living. If it goes down, what do I do?
For one thing, it gave me a chance to reflect on the medium without its constant presence. Yes, I know how to turn it off. But reflection is considerably more effective when, like separating from a lover to determine if you should continue the relationship, you have some space. Considering the medium without it chattering in my face was a welcome break. I went for walks. I read entire magazine articles rather than scanning for the high points. I made soup! Like those who promote the slow food movement, write letters by hand, or plant gardens from seed, without TV, I rediscovered a new rhythm of thinking. TV enables us to take small, hurried bites of information. That in itself is not a bad thing. The bad thing is that we’ve been convinced somewhere along the way that these small morsels of content are substantial.
Actually, my reflection on TV happened before the cable died, when I went to the Flow Conference at UT last month. It’s a critical forum for television and media culture. At one of the roundtable discussions, an older academic insisted on the supremacy of Seventies-era television. Others in the room nodded in agreement or politely kept silent. I smiled. The Seventies is when I was tutored as a conscious TV watcher. It is when I formulated my ideas of how TV works. In programming terms, it, too, was a time of reflection. After an ugly war, an appalling White House scandal, and the effects of several civil rights movements, a new kind of reality hit the small screen that didn’t depend on eating worms. Audiences, I think, were accepting of more realistic portrayals of the world instead of goofball situations or starch representations of American home life.
It probably seems quaint now, Archie Bunker’s blustering and All in the Family‘s approach to big issues like the Vietnam War, gay rights, and racism. It probably goes unnoticed now how transgressive it was to have a married couple not only lying in the same bed, but middle-aged and childless (as in The Bob Newhart Show), or how Mary on The Mary Tyler Moore Show sometimes returned home from her dates the next morning. There was plenty of drivel, too, leading up to and during the good times: The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island, Car 54 Where Are You?, Happy Days. Had someone from a generation prior to that of the sage academic I mentioned earlier been at the Flow Conference, I suspect he or she would have heralded the Playhouse 90 era as superior to all others.
If there’s one thing television does exceptionally well, it’s to provide a visual and aural date stamp for a person’s moment of being the most impressionable. That’s why I was encouraged to recently discover that Michael Tilson Thomas was remaking a Young People’s Concert series for contemporary audiences called Keeping Score (PBS); why that sage academic was committed to the glory of Seventies television; and why another scholar at the Flow Conference, a young woman, scoffed when someone at another roundtable referred to “the wet blanket that is Meredith Grey” (Ellen Pompeo on Grey’s Anatomy). Clearly the young scholar didn’t agree.
Whippersnapper.
Meanwhile, in the Oct. 30 issue of Broadcasting & Cable, columnist J. Max Robins chortled at how wrong all the TV critics have been lately. He was remarking on the low audience for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which many critics – including myself – praised. And how were we so off on the outlook for Ugly Betty, which has been such a success?
My response is that I don’t praise what will be popular, but what I think makes best use of the medium. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is ahead of its time. If we could fast-forward past this war and the climate of fear around it, I like to think there might be a larger audience for a layered drama that invites viewers to absorb a good story from “cover to cover” without skimming for the good parts. As in the past, the more turbulent the world, the more escapist TV programming flourishes. Is this unique to the U.S? I don’t know. What I do know is that, after a week apart, I like TV a lot more when I don’t have to watch it.
Keeping Score premieres this Thursday, Nov. 9, at 8pm on PBS. Additional episodes air in November. Check local listings. The audience-starved Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip airs Mondays at 8pm on NBC.
This article appears in November 10 • 2006.