Dear Jackrabbit,
Today’s letter is going to be one of those in which I talk about how different some of our life experiences are and are going to be. More specifically, we’re going to talk about… television.
Why bring this up? Just the other day you were sitting on my lap and looking at the TV with interest for the first time–at least for the first time that I’ve witnessed. What we were watching isn’t really important–it was a show about roleplaying games… big surprise, huh? What was important was we were bonding over a television show, whether you knew it or not.
Father was so proud. Still makes me a li’l weepy.
I think I’ve mentioned already how envious I am of you to be growing up in this day and age what with all of the technology available to your tiny little fingertips, but, at the same time, it’s a shame you didn’t witness how much the world has changed in just a few decades. I can only imagine how things will change in your lifetime.
When I was a kid, we only had a handful of television stations to choose from. Three major networks (one of which needed a bit of fine tuning to get in properly, and two or three UHF channels which were regional stations. If you were lucky, you might also have one or two public television channels available.
Sometimes it depended on the weather.
Back then, you could watch only what was being broadcast at the time. There was no on-demand. There was no TiVo. By 1980, there were some VHS videotape options, but those were expensive. You could be reasonably sure that most of the rest of the country was watching the same exact television broadcast as you if for no other reason than there wasn’t really any other choice.
Oh, sure… you could go outside and play and all. Read a book. Play a board game. And we did all that, too. But television was then, as it is now, a large part of the American cultural landscape. I was partly raised on Sesame Street. Saturday mornings were better than going to church because that’s when all the best cartoons were on.
It wasn’t bad… mostly because we didn’t know any better. What’s more is that it was absolutely free to watch. Sure, you had to watch the commercials. TV remotes were not really a thing so if you wanted to surf other channels during ads, or even just turn the volume down, you had to walk across the room and change it by hand on the television like some kind of goddamn wild animal.
Then cable television came along.
Suddenly, we went from five or six channels to around sixty. You had to pay for the privilege, but a lot of people felt it was worth it. There were channels devoted solely to movies, some to shopping. There was this thing called MTV (Music Television) which had a major impact on music and culture all throughout the 80s and we’re still trying to figure out exactly how much damage that did. (Nowadays it’s pretty harmless as no one watches it anymore.)
Sixty channels soon turned to 600. There was a channel for every kind of niche: Fishing, cooking, science fiction, classic movies, shopping, comedy, old television shows, recent television shows just entering syndication, news, more news, political issues, the arts, and so on and so on. There was a lot of drek, too, but the good made up for the bad. There were new cable-based networks appearing as well. The USA network is still on today. AMC shifted its focus from movies to original programming, but they’re still around. Bravo doesn’t really cover the arts anymore, but they’re around. The list goes on.
I didn’t watch much cable during the late 80s. I was in college, working a bunch of jobs, having a social life, and was in a band. In the 90s, I was spending most of my time with computers, and I had an impressive video library, so I skipped cable television for most of that decade as well.
The absolute apex of Fox television programming.
Still, I did witness the birth of a major network. One day a local station began broadcasting a few hours of dedicated program from the Fox television network. It was edgy-ish programming. Married With Children, The Tracy Ullman Show–which spun off into The Simpsons, and others. The shows were not the squeaky-clean safe fare of regular network television, but programming that pushed the envelope of good taste from time to time–with some hits and misses. Overall, they pretty much transformed television programming from a boring adolescence to something a bit more mature. A few hours a night of new broadcasting turned into the entire evening, and a leader in television drama, comedy, and animation. Yes, The Simpsons are still on. Fox also gave us Family Guy and Futurama. Chew on that.
As with MTV, we’re still trying to figure out exactly how much damage Fox television has done, but you have to admit that they are easily now the equal of the previous “Big Three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC. And note that Fox’s entertainment division shouldn’t be confused with their so-called “news” division. One gets the impression that the whole Fox corporation (music, film, TV entertainment) are a bit embarrassed by Fox News.
Then the 21st century arrived and with it a whole new way to watch television. On-Demand television became a thing. Sure, we had videotapes and DVDs, but it was still a game changer when we found ourselves free of the tyranny of television broadcast schedules and able to watch whatever shows we wanted whenever we wanted. Feel like watching a movie instead? All sorts available for instant viewing from beginning to end or with a pause in between. No waiting for when a movie would appear in the schedule and hope you managed to get to the TV in time. And didn’t need to take a break during.
We were free!
And then streaming services came along–Netflix, Hulu and others–totally separate from the cable television world. We could watch television shows and movies on our computers, tablets, and phones. We could steam them to the TV via game consoles and Blu-ray players. I stopped spending $30 or $40 a week on DVDs. There was no need, and I saved a lot of money.
It didn’t stop there.
Roku, AppleTV, and Amazon Prime only made streaming to TVs and other devices without cable even easier. Add to that, one can stream YouTube to the TV as easily as the computer and that’s just chock full of interesting stuff to watch that was never meant to part of the larger machinery of corporate television.
This is what happens when TV entertaiment makes up new rules.
When I was a kid… television was pretty primitive. Almost laughably so. Nowadays it’s advanced like no one expects, and is still in such a state of flux that no one knows really what’s going to happen next. As I said before, I find it hard to imagine what changes you’ll see in television in your lifetime.
It would be easy to say that nothing you experience will be as revolutionary as what I experienced, but I’m sure my dad would have said the same thing.
Don’t get me wrong, kid. I’m not a total TV junkie, despite how much I’ve written about it. Most of the time that I’m watching something, I’m also working. It’s something maybe half-watched or on just for the background noise. But at the same time, it’s still an inescapable part of our modern culture. Your mother and I usually watch TV while having dinner. We have our shows we watch together, and shows we watch separately. All of it on demand and on our terms. The only times we watch an actual broadcast in real time are either presidential debates, Auburn football games, or New Year’s… if we’re still awake.
Some of the shows are smartly written and can be considered quality viewing (This Week Tonight With John Oliver). And then there’s the crap (like just about all “reality” TV). The quality-to-crap ratio can be a little disconcerting, but for the most part we’re living now in an age of wonder.
Because my generation was among the first to have been brought up by television (in a manner of speaking), we’re the ones who are still more or less in charge of the overall culture. That’s probably why The Simpsons have been on for over twenty years, or why Scooby Doo is still a thing after fifty years. Same for Looney Tunes. It’s probably why there are movies for the Smurfs, and Tintin, and the Muppets. We’re not in a rush to let our childhood slip away and allow yours to take over.
You’ll get your turn soon enough.
In the meantime, boy, I found a cache of episodes of an old 70s TV show on YouTube about a time traveling alien (no, not the Doctor). Let’s go watch.
Cheers!
–Dad
