Television is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century and it certainly has changed quickly over time. Remember when you only had 4 channels and you actually had to get up and turn the knob to change the channel? If you’re under 20 this is just an old folk tale, but trust me this was the case. Today with cable, there are literally hundreds of channels, all just a remote control click away. On the surface what is amazing is that excluding the cost of cable, television is basically free entertainment for the masses. How is this possible? Doesn’t it cost thousands, if not millions to produce a show? We all know CBS, NBC, etc. are in the business of making money so how exactly do these big corporations make money providing free programming on their networks? The answer is advertising.

Major media corporations make their money by selling advertising to companies. The more people who watch a television show, the more valuable the advertising time, which means the more the network can charge for a commercial. To show an ad during the biggest shows on television (the Super Bowl, the Oscars, etc.) can cost a sponsor millions of dollars for 30 seconds. Conversely, the media corporation cannot command millions of dollars for ads if the masses aren’t watching their TV shows. In order for the media corporation to make money they have to get you watching and KEEP you watching their shows. This is their singular goal, which brings us to the 3 realities of television programming.

1. For a media corporation, the quality of a television program is not as important as the number of people who watch it.

2. The goal of a media corporation is not to educate you or entertain you. The goal of the media corporation is to keep you watching their program so they can sell advertising

3. The cheaper it is to produce a show, the better it is for the media company because they make more profit from advertising and spend less money doing it.

I am sure you have noticed the proliferation of reality television shows, with many of them being purely idiotic (think Jersey Shore). The reason for this is twofold:

• Reality shows are the cheapest to produce because they don’t have to pay high prices for real actors and expensive sets; and

• People watch these reality shows in droves (why we watch these ridiculous shows are not the topic of this blog post, but we will get to that another time).

Another staple of television is news programming. News is good, right? It is true that informing people about what is going on in your neighborhood and in the world is valuable, but take a minute to think about how the media corporation is doing it. Watch CNN for 3 hours and you will see the same 10 stories showed over and over again. Watch it for 10 hours – the same 10 stories. What’s worse is that if you change the channel to MSNBC you will see the same 10 stories that you saw on CNN! Cable news is only giving you a tiny fraction of the news of the world. What they are really doing is rebroadcasting the most popular 10 stories every hour so they can get the maximum viewers every hour.

Reality shows, Cable News, "life in the prison" shows, talent shows, and the list goes on. All these shows are cheap to produce, the masses eat them up and we sit and watch these shows like drones for hours on end. This is where the terms "idiot box" and "boob tube" come from. We are allowing ourselves to turn into mindless zombies watching the same programs over and over again while the corporation makes millions off of our laziness and our fixation on second rate programming.

So what can we do about this? I am certainly not advocating a boycott of television. Contrary to the tone of this post I do believe there are some very good programs on television and well worth watching. Likewise the news is important and those 10 stories are important. Even the dreaded reality show is sometimes necessary as a diversion from your own life issues. The point of this post is that television has to be put in its proper perspective.

TELEVISION PROGRAMS ARE FED TO YOU. You are not in control of the information that is FED TO YOU. Even though you have all these channels, you are still just choosing between information that is FED TO YOU from one source or the other. If you want the richest entertainment and news experience, TAKE CONTROL AND CHOOSE YOUR OWN SOURCES.

"The Internet is the only truly free communication medium"

If you want the news, go get it. You could watch CNN for 10 hours and wait for a story on hurricane "whatever" or you could go to the Internet and do your own search to find out everything there is to know about the hurricane. You can research it and read about it for 20 minutes or 20 hours but it is guaranteed that you will learn more about it than if you watched CNN for 100 hours.

To extend this further, turn off the TV for 2 hours and research any topic you want on the Web (a video game, a news story, anything) and you will be amazed at how quickly you can educate yourself and the depth of knowledge you will gain about that topic. Keep doing this each day (no TV for 2 hours and replace this with Internet research on a topic) and you will quickly see the value of self-directed entertainment and information searching. You will also quickly see TV for what it really is – an idiot box for the masses.

Special Request: Young people (under the age of 20) are most vulnerable to the trap of TV as they have spent all their lives with cable. If you are in this age bracket please heed this call. 2 hours is all we ask. Adults who are reading this - please share this with your children. Becoming a TV drone is not good for our young people as it is creating a nation of slaves with their time completely consumed with Snookie and Gaga and not spent trying to become healthier, inventive, and creative contributors to society.