Watching TV Makes You Smarter.
(Chicago Citation)
On May 9th 1961, Newton N. Minow, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission blasted the television industry and called much of it's programming "a vast wasteland." (O'Connor 1986) Twenty-five years later, in 1986, a television writer for the New York Times mirrored this criticism when he said that it was still "surprisingly valid." (O'Connor 1986) This criticism of the television industry has, in the past, been a valid criticism as throughout most of television history, the programming has been a two dimensional representation of the realities of life. While many in the media still like to criticize television, there has been some major improvements in terms of complexity of plot as well as introducing the intricacies of real-life into the storylines of television programming. Today's television programming, while still containing a lot of "fluff," has, through the use of different techniques, increased the audience's intelligence in ways the audience does not realize.
Steven Johnson in his article "Watching TV Makes You Smarter" discusses this concept in detail; even introducing what he referred to as a "Sleeper Curve," a concept by which the television program's complexity forces the viewer to "Pay attention, make inferences, [and] track shifting social relationships." (Johnson 2005) Johnson asserts that, by the late 1990's the old, simple, straightforward plot lines and character relationships had been replaced by the multiple plot lines which often intersect each other at seemingly random times and involve the complexities of real-life situations and relationships. Johnson backs up this claim by stating that the modern viewer, who watches television...
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