Take back your TV!

Take back your TV! Reclaim it for your own. It’s not yours right now. Think about it. Do you get to say what is broadcasted? Do you get to say what shows are made? Do you get to pick the content in the news? No, you don’t. You get to pick from preselected, prefiltered content.

As a person working in the business of entertainment, mainly the television and film mediums, I get to see how the content (shows, music, news) are used as ‘placeholders for the advertising'. Where do you think the money comes from to make your favorite show or to broadcast the news? The advertising. The broadcasting companies use your publicly owned airwaves (of which they’re supposed to lease from us) for their private profit and interest.

Look at it this way:

You buy a television set for $500 - $2000 dollars (average price)

You may have a home theatre system or better speakers for $500 - $2000 (average price)

Usually have to pay for cable/satellite TV setup fees $100

Pay a permanent subscription fee for television broadcasts $120/month ($1440/year average)

The average TV consumption per person in the United States is 4 to 6 hours per day! So what are you paying all that money for? You’re paying to be bombarded with advertising.. I see it as absurd that people pay $100’s of dollars to receive advertising. At first, pay services like XM Radio made you pay for music without the advertising. Similarly, Pandora does this online now after At&t bought it out. In these cases you're pre paying so the advertising is kept to a minimum.

Ok, now for the News… For those who depend on those 30-second sound bytes for all their knowledge.

The News on TV is not news in the sense of the word that most people take it for. Actually, the news is part of the entertainment programming of the television networks. It could be best described as infotainment more than anything else. This is how the networks get out of being responsible for the truth in the content.

In a 1-hour news cycle there’s about 3-5 minutes of news. The rest of the time is spent on advertising and shaping your opinion (through repetition, preying on your emotions, and omission). You cannot know anything within the short soundbytes offered up as news, but within a few minutes you can sure have an opinion about something based on how you feel from the programming. Yet the programming leaves you ignorant.

So what can you do instead of spending money on cable TV? What could you do to stop the bombardment of ads that shape your opinions? How do you change this condition and have your TV work for you?

The answer is to take it back.

The medium is yours, it’s yours to do with as you see fit. Here’s an example of how I took back my TV…

In 1997 I moved into an apartment that didn’t have cable TV. I was broke at the time and was not going to pay the $100 setup fee and $50/month. So I went without it. Within 6 months I forgot I had a TV. Later I found a good job and setup a small home theatre system for DVDs. Documentaries made their way into my TV along with movies. Now with the advent of broadband internet, there are numerous news sources available to you online. And most all video cards on a computer can drive a television monitor.

Now with my TV I can scan the earth & sky with Google Earth. I watch news programming that I choose. Many TV shows are shown for free after their premier broadcast. And my newspaper is by my design on my screen via an RSS news reader in my web browser. I find content that's relevant to my interests (ie. www.energybulletin.net) and I have a virtual news page that I put together.

My TV is now an educational tool. Education, News, Entertainment are mine to create. Via the internet, the freedom of information is back in the hands of people. You no longer have to sit there flipping through 500 channels of pre-filtered garbage that is intended to keep you from thinking for yourself and to keep you shopping.

Don’t settle for private interests to choose what you see and hear. Take back your TV and make it work for you.