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Post by mylungswereaching on Nov 17, 2009 16:20:21 GMT -5
It also depends on what you read or watch, of course. I'm guessing I can find plenty of repetitive predictability in books out there. I'll start with the racks at the checkout counter at the supermarket and go from there. There's tripe to be found in all formats. Indeed. I imagine that most people who would say "I prefer books to TV" are comparing their favorite books to TV shows that they rarely watch, or, if they do, that they don't think much of. But there are plenty plenty plenty of awful books written and bought by the millions. Never equate "reading" itself with higher intelligence. It depends on what you read, just like it depends on what you watch. But at least someone who likes reading books gnerally has an attention span longer than a fruit fly. Documentory shows now go off for a three minute comercial and then spend 5 minutes going over what they talked about in the last 10 minute segment. They assume that people cannot keep an idea in their heads longer than about 30 seconds.
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Post by inlovewithcrow on Nov 17, 2009 16:45:54 GMT -5
And Harlan Ellison claimed to get his ideas from a PO Box in Schenectady, NY...before he got arrested in Mitchell. But I'm off topic badly now.
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Post by Mod City on Nov 17, 2009 20:07:22 GMT -5
Indeed. I imagine that most people who would say "I prefer books to TV" are comparing their favorite books to TV shows that they rarely watch, or, if they do, that they don't think much of. But there are plenty plenty plenty of awful books written and bought by the millions. Never equate "reading" itself with higher intelligence. It depends on what you read, just like it depends on what you watch. But at least someone who likes reading books gnerally has an attention span longer than a fruit fly. Documentory shows now go off for a three minute comercial and then spend 5 minutes going over what they talked about in the last 10 minute segment. They assume that people cannot keep an idea in their heads longer than about 30 seconds. Generally, it's bad to generalize. Not everyone may enjoy reading as much as you do, but I don't think it's fair to insult them for it, regardless if you think it's true. Now obviously books have been a source of learning, entertainment and history for a long time and remain so today for a reason. There are some facets of the way they present their content that cannot be emulated well in other formats. Many people strongly prefer books to other forms of entertainment, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And people today do not read enough, of that there is no question. But I'm going to stop short of tearing down people who don't throw their televisions out the window in favor of their library card.
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Post by mylungswereaching on Nov 17, 2009 21:57:21 GMT -5
But at least someone who likes reading books gnerally has an attention span longer than a fruit fly. Documentory shows now go off for a three minute comercial and then spend 5 minutes going over what they talked about in the last 10 minute segment. They assume that people cannot keep an idea in their heads longer than about 30 seconds. Generally, it's bad to generalize. Not everyone may enjoy reading as much as you do, but I don't think it's fair to insult them for it, regardless if you think it's true. Now obviously books have been a source of learning, entertainment and history for a long time and remain so today for a reason. There are some facets of the way they present their content that cannot be emulated well in other formats. Many people strongly prefer books to other forms of entertainment, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And people today do not read enough, of that there is no question. But I'm going to stop short of tearing down people who don't throw their televisions out the window in favor of their library card. Quite possibly it came out harsher than I meant it to. I should have said that reading more than a page or two requires a decent attention span but TV executives treat TV viewers like they have the attention span of a fruit fly. My complaint is against the continous dumbing down of TV, not that the viewers of TV are dumb. My original post is about why reading makes me like TV less and less. While many books are as bad or worse than TV, you can always find a few books that are very good. It's almost impossible to find a really good scipted show on network TV. Reading anything longer than a few pages inherently requires some ability to concentrate. TV generally does not. But the main point is that the attention span required to watch TV has dropped and dropped over the years. It seems like TV executives are trying to program people into having the shortest attention span possible. Most TV viewers have a lot more intellegence than the networks give them credit for. I really don't believe that most TV viewers forget what they were watching after a 3 minute comercial break but the producers of many shows seem to.
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Nov 17, 2009 23:34:23 GMT -5
Not to defend TV, but television producers will agree with you that they aim for "shorter attention spans," but not for the reasons you suggest. It's not that they think their audiences are dumb. It's that they know they have a remote control in their hands. They have to keep things "punchy," not because they think that people *can't* concentrate, but because they know that they *won't* if one click of a button away is something a touch more exciting. And they're right. I do it all the time, and I don't feel at all guilty about it because when I watch TV, I expect it to be light entertainment for the most part. I watch TV as an alternative to reading, and I want it to be a different experience. In itself, I don't think that's a bad thing, unless you *only* watch TV and allow yourself to get used to small chunks of content. "Reading" suffers from the same problem...on the internet. Even people who may love to settle in to a good novel probably find themselves skimming online articles and clicking links before they've finished whatever it is they're reading. There's a great article in The Atlantic about that phenomenon here: www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/googleI think that kind of thing only becomes a problem when you allow it to dominate how you interact with every kind of media. If you read online AND books AND watch television AND movies, you're less likely to suffer. But if you indulge in one kind of entertainment to the exclusion of all others, you're likely to start to conform your tastes and habits to what you're used to getting.
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Post by Mod City on Nov 18, 2009 2:50:06 GMT -5
My complaint is against the continous dumbing down of TV, not that the viewers of TV are dumb. My original post is about why reading makes me like TV less and less. I admit that's kind of how I took it. Sorry to be snippy. And I completely agree with the dumbing-down complaint. Here again, there are many more books out there than television shows. Especially network television shows that aren't reality programs, daytime talk shows or soap operas. Even with the best satellite packages, you're not going to get more than 300 channels, of which only a few carry original scripted dramatic programming. Of those, only a handful will carry real quality in their productions. But good programs do happen. Television (and film) is a much, much smaller world. The number of accessible books out there dwarfs what a consumer can obtain through television. I just don't think it's a fair comparison in that sense.
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Post by Mighty Jack on Nov 18, 2009 3:12:06 GMT -5
A chicken or the egg question. Does reading rewire the brain, or do you/I read because the brain was already wired for that act.
And in kind - is impatience with television due to reading, or a product of natural born biology, or the way one is raised or (forgive me) some kind of intellectual arrogance?
Sure, reading is likely good exercise for your gray matter, but does it effect how one views TV? I don't know. I’m a voracious reader but I’ve also enjoyed a lot of TV shows over the years and I love both smart and silly film (from Kurosawa to comic book flicks) I accept differences in adaptations and celebrate the uniqueness of each medium. Does that mean that I am well rounded, or maybe too dumb or too unsophisticated? Or is it that I am a slave to the way my brain is wired and I had no other choice but to think and feel that way?
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Post by mylungswereaching on Nov 18, 2009 12:46:46 GMT -5
A chicken or the egg question. Does reading rewire the brain, or do you/I read because the brain was already wired for that act. And in kind - is impatience with television due to reading, or a product of natural born biology, or the way one is raised or (forgive me) some kind of intellectual arrogance? Sure, reading is likely good exercise for your gray matter, but does it effect how one views TV? I don't know. I’m a voracious reader but I’ve also enjoyed a lot of TV shows over the years and I love both smart and silly film (from Kurosawa to comic book flicks) I accept differences in adaptations and celebrate the uniqueness of each medium. Does that mean that I am well rounded, or maybe too dumb or too unsophisticated? Or is it that I am a slave to the way my brain is wired and I had no other choice but to think and feel that way? A lot of people seem to think that this is a smart/dumb issue. My point is more does TV viewing require a different type of thinking and are they somewhat incompatable? I find that with comedies, some shows are pretty good. I was always attracted to the few shows like MST3k where even after seeing the episode multiple times, I still run into jokes that I never got before. I find really obvious shows where I understand every joke the first time wear out pretty quick. It's drama's that I find boring. With a drama, I want something that I can lose myself into. When the show is too simplified or predictible, I lose interest. I also lose interest when the writers put twists for the sake of twists. Mainstream movies and TV rarely take any chances anymore.
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Post by Mighty Jack on Nov 19, 2009 1:38:31 GMT -5
Are they incompatible? Not for me. I like drama's - you find them boring. We both read. Considering that I would say it's a matter of personal taste rather than a " Does reading affect tv and movie viewing?" question. Also: When you use words like simplified and predictable, that leads us back to that "smart/dumb" issue. Which you say isn't the point. So I guess I'm not understanding what the point is and I'll bow out of the conversation as gracefully as I can.
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Post by mylungswereaching on Nov 20, 2009 0:13:33 GMT -5
Are they incompatible? Not for me. I like drama's - you find them boring. We both read. Considering that I would say it's a matter of personal taste rather than a " Does reading affect tv and movie viewing?" question. Also: When you use words like simplified and predictable, that leads us back to that "smart/dumb" issue. Which you say isn't the point. So I guess I'm not understanding what the point is and I'll bow out of the conversation as gracefully as I can. I haven't been making my point very well. Most of the drama's on network TV seem to fall into a few basic categories, cop shows, doctor shows,and mysteries. How many different type plots can you have for cop show or a doctor show? How many CSI's are there? How many plots are available? This inherently makes the plots simplified and predictible because there are so few to choose from. Yes they use science to solve the plots but the science is frequently pretty bad. Go get me a DNA analysis and he comes back 2 minutes later. All of the cop procedual shows follow basically the same path every show. I watched cop shows for 30 years and after the first 1000 or so, they get very predictable. You don't have to be very smart to recognize patterns you've seen thousands of times. I don't get into the solutions for the crimes because I know that their making up half the science as they go along. I don't have any problem with fake science in Star Trek but it bugs me in CSI. I'll admit that most of the problems come in because of time constraints, and the need to make it more dramatic but I still find bad science boring. My problem is, if you've only got say 20 slots available for dramas per week for all of the networks combined, why have 18 or 19 of the show in the same 3 categories? If you don't like the three categories, you've only got 1 or 2 shows to choose from. All generas have predictible patterns but if you had many different generas to choose from, it wouldn't be as noticeable. There are many good show on cable but the networks refuse to make any sciripted dramas outside of a few limited areas. Someone pointed out that there is a much greater supply of books than TV show which is absolutely correct, but TV makes the problem worse by limiting itself.
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Nov 20, 2009 0:50:43 GMT -5
I'll just jump on the "pile-on-my-lung" party here, but, really...what do you expect? TV studios have to crank out profitable ratings-grabbers by the boatload. Everyone has known for ages that the main networks are going to be largely conservative because "conservative" in that business means doing what has already proven itself successful, which means recycling proven formulas.
TV can't afford to be experimental, for the most part. But when did that become news? Sitcoms and cop dramas were already old hat 40 years ago at the very least. TV is supposed to be "comfort food" on average. People don't flip on the tube after working 10 hour days to be intellectually challenged. They want easy, comforting escape. Duh.
But is that a reason to demean it? That's like saying that McDonald's is bad for being cheap and overly accessible. It's designed to be cheap and overly accessible! So is TV!
You can't criticize it for being what it's supposed to be.
But you also can't ignore the wonderful exceptions that do exist. Everyone has their favorites, but TV has also produced some really innovative ways to tell a story, in terms of visual, episodic, and other narrative elements. To overgeneralize ignores the artists who have been able to buck the economic pressures that otherwise dominate the medium.
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Post by mylungswereaching on Nov 20, 2009 14:02:48 GMT -5
I'll just jump on the "pile-on-my-lung" party here, but, really...what do you expect? TV studios have to crank out profitable ratings-grabbers by the boatload. Everyone has known for ages that the main networks are going to be largely conservative because "conservative" in that business means doing what has already proven itself successful, which means recycling proven formulas. TV can't afford to be experimental, for the most part. But when did that become news? Sitcoms and cop dramas were already old hat 40 years ago at the very least. TV is supposed to be "comfort food" on average. People don't flip on the tube after working 10 hour days to be intellectually challenged. They want easy, comforting escape. Duh. But is that a reason to demean it? That's like saying that McDonald's is bad for being cheap and overly accessible. It's designed to be cheap and overly accessible! So is TV! You can't criticize it for being what it's supposed to be. But you also can't ignore the wonderful exceptions that do exist. Everyone has their favorites, but TV has also produced some really innovative ways to tell a story, in terms of visual, episodic, and other narrative elements. To overgeneralize ignores the artists who have been able to buck the economic pressures that otherwise dominate the medium. I agree that most shows on TV need to aim for the lowest common denominator in order to be sucessful. My problem is that it now seems like all shows seem to do that. There are inovative shows on but they're all on cable. Network TV seems to be aiming for the largest share of a shrinking market. There is a growing number of people who only watch Network TV for special events like the Superbowl. Marketing people tell you that it is easier to keep customers than gain new customers. One of the problems lately is that there are fewer and fewer scripted shows on the air. If you've got 30 of them you can afford to take a chance on 1 or 2. If you've only got 5 or 6 they all have to hit. Completely ignoring 20% of your potential market this year means ignoring 30% in a few years and 40% a few years after that. You can't please everyone but not even making an attempt is stupid. Movies changed because of Jaws. Big studios only want big hits now. What's wrong with making movies for $5 million that make $20 million? So they put out the same few plots over and over again. I don't mind it as much as TV because the big studio's aren't the only ones making movies. I like Golden Globus model put out a bunch of formula pictures in different generas that are made fairly cheaply and fairly well and make a decent profit. Then take a chance on a few pictures , some fairly inexpensive but intended to be quality and once in a while a really expensive movie that shoots for a big hit. This way you've got a steady revenue stream but you've also got a few pictures that build the brand name that helps pull more people into watching your more formula pictures. Businesses that never take chances don't last in the long term. Calculated risks are necessary. Books and to a lessor extent movies give you a lot of choice. TV is limited in its ability to give choices but to give practicaly none is short sighted. Quality shows need time to grow. Shows are being canceled after 1 or 2 episodes are aired because they have bad ratings. Many classic shows took a while to get going. Cheers, Seinfeld, and the Simpsons wouldn't have made it past the first 3 or 4 episodes in todays marketplace.
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Post by inlovewithcrow on Nov 21, 2009 11:53:06 GMT -5
Just to add, while nearly 100 of people in the US regular see TV, I've read that only 5% ever read books other than romances (another 5% buy category romances, which I don't think many would try to claim are intellectually superior to typical dramatic TV). So yes, TV does have to be largely aimed to the least common denominator, whereas books can be targeted toward niches.
As a retired teacher, I do notice that people who dislike TV tend to be the better students. Or, rather, perhaps, the real geniuses I've taught don't feel they have time for TV.
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Post by callipygias on Nov 21, 2009 14:59:25 GMT -5
There are millions upon millions of books sold each year in the U.S. alone, not to mention those checked out of libraries, and if even a fourth of them are actually read, that still equals an incredible number of readers. (Not nearly TV levels, but more than 10%, I bet.) I don't discount romance novels, either. It's escapist reading, like most fiction. I mean, it's crap, but so are most of the fantasy novels I used to love, probably. As long as it was done the way I liked it, I could read what amounted to the same goofy story over and over and over.
I also hate the idea of relating what we read, or even if we read, with intelligence or intellect. (I don't mean to pick on you, ilwc, it's been mentioned elsewhere.) Reading is a great way to exercise the brain, but if you don't do anything with that big ol' muscley brain what good is it? Non-readers are much more likely to be active, I think, than readers. Like most people, I read what I read because it's what I love, but if I'm any smarter for it, it's a useless, unproductive kind of smart. In sixty-five years my step-father has probably never once even considered reading a book for pleasure. He was a fire chief and a farmer, now just a farmer. On a visit a couple years ago I went out to the shed to tell him lunch was ready and I saw that he and his stepson-in-law had completely disassembled his almost brand new $250,000 Belarus tractor--disassembled it down to the nuts and bolts--because it "didn't feel like it was running right." At lunch he was telling Michael (the stepson-in-law) what they were going to do that afternoon "after they put the Belarus back together," like it was just a simple nuisance to rebuild the thing. I'd probably need ten years and a thousand manuals to be able to do what he did almost instinctively in a few hours. So I went inside ready to discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but since nobody brought it up I turned on the TV.
(I suggest re-naming this thread "Reading vs. TV/Movies," or something. The question in the title was abandoned almost instantly.)
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Post by mylungswereaching on Nov 23, 2009 17:21:31 GMT -5
There are millions upon millions of books sold each year in the U.S. alone, not to mention those checked out of libraries, and if even a fourth of them are actually read, that still equals an incredible number of readers. (Not nearly TV levels, but more than 10%, I bet.) I don't discount romance novels, either. It's escapist reading, like most fiction. I mean, it's crap, but so are most of the fantasy novels I used to love, probably. As long as it was done the way I liked it, I could read what amounted to the same goofy story over and over and over. I also hate the idea of relating what we read, or even if we read, with intelligence or intellect. (I don't mean to pick on you, ilwc, it's been mentioned elsewhere.) Reading is a great way to exercise the brain, but if you don't do anything with that big ol' muscley brain what good is it? Non-readers are much more likely to be active, I think, than readers. Like most people, I read what I read because it's what I love, but if I'm any smarter for it, it's a useless, unproductive kind of smart. In sixty-five years my step-father has probably never once even considered reading a book for pleasure. He was a fire chief and a farmer, now just a farmer. On a visit a couple years ago I went out to the shed to tell him lunch was ready and I saw that he and his stepson-in-law had completely disassembled his almost brand new $250,000 Belarus tractor--disassembled it down to the nuts and bolts--because it "didn't feel like it was running right." At lunch he was telling Michael (the stepson-in-law) what they were going to do that afternoon "after they put the Belarus back together," like it was just a simple nuisance to rebuild the thing. I'd probably need ten years and a thousand manuals to be able to do what he did almost instinctively in a few hours. So I went inside ready to discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but since nobody brought it up I turned on the TV. (I suggest re-naming this thread "Reading vs. TV/Movies," or something. The question in the title was abandoned almost instantly.) I'm not trying to relate reading with intellect. I'm almost exactly the same age as Joel. When I was growing up there were no video games, cable tv, personal computers, internet, etc. If you didn't have anyone else around or money to go out, it was either do some sort of hobby, read or watch tv. I ended up reading and watching tv a lot. I have seen about 10,000 different cop/lawyer shows, 10,000 doctor shows and and 10,000 mysteries over the years. I've also read thousands of books. I find it hard not to notice patterns after seeing so many shows and reading so many books of essentially the same type. If I never read and saw that there were a lot of different ways to tell a story, maybe it wouldn't be as boring. For example, I was watching a hospital show a couple of weeks ago that I record for my wife. I watch it once in a while and if I'm in the right mood,it's fun to watch. In the first 10 minutes they introduced two sick children, a baby who was on the verge of death and a cute 10 year old who looked healthy but was dying. I thought, what's going to happen to these kids, both die, both live or one live and one die. They can't have both die because it would be too depressing. They can't have both live because you lose the drama and opportunity to cry if both live. So one has to live and one die but which one? Having the baby die and the 10 year old live is too obvious, so the 10 year old has to die. I was right. I came to this conclusion not because I'm smart but because I've seen this exact same set up a hundred times and it almost always works out the same way. My reading tells me that there are other ways to set up a story, rather than repeating the same stories over and over again. There is a place for the old comfortable plots and characters but why does it have to be all of them? If I never read, maybe I'd never have realized there was an alternative.
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