Television Programs: How It Affects Society
“It was an accident,” proclaimed Janet Jackson after her Super Bowl fiasco, “a wardrobe malfunction.” It didn’t appear to be one to the millions of people who witnessed the exposing of one of Jackson’s breasts. Many were shocked and outraged, but this type of thing isn’t new for the infamous “boob tube”. In 1977, the miniseries “Roots”, was the first TV show to air bare breasts (Clark 1070). Even still, television programs have come a long way since that and the time of their creation.
Invented in 1923, television programs started off with airing sporting events, news hours, and cookie cutter programs (“History of TV” History). These programs usually taught morals and lessons at their closings and gave a false sense of reality. Today, you can see just about anything on TV, from someone being gunned down to wild and risk-free sex between couples (Gay couples too!). Studies have been done to see if these scenes seen by society can affect us negatively, as children have been analyzed through adulthood to see if violent and sexual behavior on TV has affected them badly. The results are children starting to deal with adult issues at an early age due to the graphic nature of television programs. Society now is more aggressive and losing it’s values. With this said, television programs have clearly evolved since 1923 and affected society negatively due to it’s violent and sexual content.
Since it’s start television has grown in availability and reached the living rooms of many. Television’s expansion started off slow due to the Depression and World War II. By the end of World War II, TV was certain to grow as fast as the radio had twenty years prior (Jost 1139). Television has also developed better technology as it is now shown in color with digital picturing. This started towards the late 1930's, when new technology was being used to show baseball games and special events (Jost 1138).
With the rise in technology companies have come up with a new system, interactive television. “With digital interactivity, consumers are in total control of the programming they bring into their homes,” declared Time Warner Chairman Gerald Levin on interactive television (qtd. in Jost 1131). I have witnessed firsthand, interactive TV as my cable company, Comcast, offers something similar called On Demand TV. With it I can choose movies or shows I want to watch.
Before analyzing the history of Rock n’ Roll television, the history of how watching television came to become a popular must come into question. To summarize briefly, the invention of television was in development since the 1870s, however the first demonstration of live transmitted images in motion was in 1925 lead by Scottish inventor John Logie Baird (Radio Shows Far Away Objects in Motion). The image was of Baird’s business partner Oliver Hutchinson (Television), showing a mere five frames per second, it was an impressive sight for the time. With perfection of the invention, electronic televisions had been developed by Vladimir Kosma Zworykin with the help of the RCA radio...
The media is known for displaying a large quantity of violence and sex on television, possibly desensitizing situations that should not be taken lightly in real life. Two previous studies show sexual attitudes portraying entertainment television tend to correlate to attitudes, beliefs, and actions of people in real life. According to a study, television suggests that sexual encounters take place between young, attractive individuals, overemphasizing heterosexuality, and ignoring the fact that major risks are included in such impulsive actions. In "dialogue, characterizations, storylines and themes, television presents adolescents with numerous verbal and visual examples of how dating, intimacy, relationships and sex are handled" (Ward 237). Therefore, television is to blame for promiscuity, especially at a young age. In a second study, people watching television with a lot of sexual content also made incorrect assumptions on frequency of sexual behaviors in real life. Research was analyzed that showed "a correlation between sexual content on television and sexual activity...other researchers, however, find no such relationship" (Taylor 130). However, both studies have many grey areas, and the topic needs further investigation.
When the first television was first successfully shown, people thought that this invention brought people to a new age, and that the television was a huge benefit to humanity. Unfortunately, since then the Golden Era of television's moral and standards have fallen drastically. We are far away from the days when Lassie and the town of Mayberry ruled the airways and were the talk of America. What was once intended as a benefit for society has become its detrimental fall, now instead of upholding American society's standards, television is working to corrupt the very society it intended to help.
Television has been in American Society since 1920’s and has gradually been spreading around the world. Television is like a drug in American Society, it is addictive to all ages including children. It has the most effect on children that are young and do not know anything about television. As children grow older they focus more in watching shows and playing video games for many hours.“Kids and teens 8 to 18 years spend nearly 4 hours a day in front of a TV screen and almost 2 additional hours on the computer (outside of schoolwork) and playing video games.” (How) This is bad for children because if they spend almost 6 hours just in mass media. Then the question of how much time will they spend in doing task that might benefit their body and their physical aspect of life.
What role does television play in society? For decades we have seen many parts of our world rapidly going through changes in technology. Today’s society has been transformed by means of communication and the available information through mass media. Most Americans rely on television for news, sports, and entertainment. Television is just one of the many examples of how technology has changed our lives. Since the invention of the television in the early 1900’s, it has played a very important role in our lives. Having a television set in the home has become very essential in today’s society. We depend on it to entertain us with its sitcoms and to inform us about current world issues. The problem is that sometimes what we hear or see on television is not always accurate or correct. Sometimes news stories give us the wrong information and we believe that it is true because it is being said on television. They may give you a story, but they may leave out some details to prove their point or to make the story more interesting. Americans are among the most ill-informed people in the world. Television, in other words, is not the great information machine. It is the great disinformation machine. TV tends to mislead us with its stories and in many ways we allow ourselves to be fall behind in the world as we tend to want to watch the entertainment shows and not the news broadcasts. Thus, we are not informed about what is going on in o...
Ever since television was first introduced to America, it has changed the culture. It’s affected American families in positive and negative ways. Whether the television is big and bulky or thin and flat, everyone’s eyes seem to be glued to it. Television competes with other human interactions, such as talking to family and friends, school, church, etcetera. It’s shaped many things -- people’s opinions on different topics, people’s choices in an election, and people’s views on things like race and class. It’s changed the who the people in the American population are, and how other countries view us.
An estimated one billion television sets have been sold in North America, and on average, children watch 28 hours per week. The effect of television creates negative development in children. Television is one of the biggest contributions to the growing amount of obese children in North America. The amount of glorified violence in today’s society can be attributed to children watching high rated television shows. Many young children are involved in promiscuous behaviour. This might be a result of what they had seen on a television program. A good deal of advertising companies advertise on children’s networks, because children are the easiest targets to be manipulated into their product. Television is not the only contributor to negative development in children but it is a big one. Effects of television will continue to follow children through adulthood. Children can do many other activates that give then the same positive effects of television.
(Violence in television programs and movies and its impact on children and families is not a new topic. Almost 30 years ago the U.S. Surgeon General warned Americans about the negative effect of television have on the emotions and behaviours of children.)
Although television is perceived as one of the greatest scientific inventions of the 20th century and is watched enormously by the American public, it is often criticized as the root of intellectual destruction for children. Television has been praised throughout history for its ability to transmit visual images with accompanying sound to entertain, educate, and to provide a sense of truth. Through the miracle of television the public has witnessed extraordinary historical events in an approach that no other form of communication has ever been able to duplicate. It has brought the man landing on the moon, the Kennedy assassination, and the Vietnam War into the living room, as if the viewers were actually there. Although television has captured such memorable, historical documentation, it also can be perceived as an evil storyteller. Through the illustrations of TV, children have witnessed war, murder, hate, prejudice, sexual promiscuity, as well as other forms of inapt actions, before they were even old enough to ride a bicycle, without training wheels.
These studies have helped exploit the negative influences that are exposed to children, and adolescents when they view sexual, or violent content. Having more control over what your kids are exposed to can prevent these influences. Violence, and sex on television does in fact negatively influence today's youth, and adolescents. "Children are influenced by media; they learn by observing, imitating, and making behaviors their own(Anderson, Bushman 19)." Helping prevent children from negative influences, and instilling positive influences can help make society safer for future generations to come.
... for children. Children are exposed to 20,000 advertisements a year. The average child watches 8,000 televised murders and 100,000 acts of violence before finishing elementary school. By the time children graduate from high school, those numbers more than doubles. Furthermore, television is shown to influence attitudes about race and gender. Pro-social and anti-social behaviors are influenced by television.
Television can not influenced all of us, but it can definitely influence young children, who are, “curious and easily influenced. They tend to mimic and repeat what they hear and see on television without knowing of right and wrong” (Simmons 149). These influences depend on what kinds of shows children are watching. Parents are the one controlling theirs children, but without parental supervision children will watch what pleases them; that is were the problem lies.
However, unlike in other countries when television hit America it proceeded to explode in popularity. For example, in the 1950’s only, “8% of American households owned a TV”, but by 1960, “ 90% had one”. (Sachs 441) This trend of America being the “greatest TV watchers” has still not changed today with Americans typically watching “more than five hours per day of television on average”. (Sachs 441)
Television has become one of the major entertainment providers in our modern life. It sits in the living room of about almost every home in the world and it is the one thing that most people like to come home to after a long day of work or school. Not only does it give us something to laugh or get scared at but it also provides us with valuable information about what is happening around our local community and around different places in the world. But, as good as this sounds, Television may be affecting us without even realizing it. Being one of the major distractors in today 's society, it gets us attached to its content in which a lot of people spend a lot of their time watching. Being thus, watching too
Can T.V. shows be the reflection of our society or influence the behavior of the members of our community? Since 1936, when television broadcasting began, its priority was to inform and to entertain our society; subsequently, a massive amount of rules and regulations were created to control the material presented on TV, whose principal goal was to safeguard the moral and ethical standards of its time. Nevertheless, from its beginning to the present home entertainment television standards have changed; likewise, the moral and ethical values of our society have changed and continue to change from generation to generation. TV shows from the 50’s, 80’s, and the present exposed many changes in the way human roles are exposed, the language tone is utilized, the sexual content is displayed, and the multicultural influences are incorporated on TV. First of all, television comedy like “Father Knows Best”, presented on television from 1954 to 1960, is a typical family show presented on TV, which portrays a middle class Caucasian family with three children that live in a Midwest middle class community.