Conservative billionaires are buying up TV networks. This worried me at first — a threat to democracy and all that — but then I thought: Let them have them.
TV is kind of a drag. Most of us worry about phones and social media turning us into zombified citizens, but television has been doing exactly that for decades.
I admire the essays of E.B. White, who did not grow up with TV. He sensed its power in the demo stage, as early as the 1939 World’s Fair. “I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world,” he wrote, “and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision, we shall discover a new and unbearable disturbance of the modern peace, or a saving radiance … We shall stand or fall by television — of that I am quite sure.”
As for me, I have trouble telling Plato from Socrates, but I remember these classic lyrics:
Listen to my story about a man named Jed,
A poor mountaineer,
Barely kept his family fed,
And then one day he was shooting for some food,
And up through the ground came a-bubblin’ crude,
Oil that is, Texas tea.
I could go on with the odyssey of “The Beverly Hillbillies,” but it’s ever-more embarrassing.
TV hasn’t changed everything, but it’s changed a lot. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that television (“The Apprentice”) made Donald Trump into what he is today. It was the perfect vehicle, a fake reality created out of thin air, much like his strange golden hair.
I thought home viewers would tire of him, as they did with early stars like Milton Berle or Red Skelton, but he is a Tasmanian Devil (Bugs Bunny reference) who never stops. And now with war powers!
But back to the television of today. I recently watched a day-old episode of the “CBS Evening News” on YouTube, to examine for myself its alleged conservative spin. The host, Tony Dokoupil, is no Walter Cronkite. He has the gravitas of a fill-in host, a guy for the Sunday night shift in summer.
It didn’t strike me as right-wing, just … less serious, less important. And maybe that accomplishes the goal.
The “NBC Nightly News,” which I’ve been watching since “The Huntley-Brinkley Report,” has changed, too. It seems skittish about political news, which gets shorter shrift. Instead we see videos of floods, fires, sinkholes, a car driving into a CVS, an airline passenger acting badly, somebody in Florida doing some Florida thing.
Channel 5, our local station from Burlington/Plattsburgh, squeezes in just a bit of news around multiple weather segments. On many nights they have two meteorologists on duty. The second has so little to do he or she drives around in a weather van searching for wind gusts, or slush.
Sometimes it seems goofy and I switch over to MS NOW for a few minutes to watch “Guess What Trump’s Done Now.” Just a little revs the engines.
I hate to sound like an old crank, but there are too many channels, streaming costs too much, sports coverage is over-produced (fireworks, big screens inside stadiums, six halftime analysts for a football game) and we often can’t find the clicker buried in the couch cushions.
Now they are putting certain Big Games on Paramount, Peacock, Amazon Prime or some other damned channel. This sets off a chain of confusion in our household. Do we get that channel? Is it one the kids share with us? What is the password? Why didn’t we write it down? By the time it’s sorted out I’m ready for bed.
When we moved to Lebanon in 1982, Twin State Cable (locally owned) had about 14 channels and cost around 15 bucks. It even had HBO. In color.
I could go for something like that again. Call it Cheap Old People TV.
These days, some of our favorite shows are on ad-free PBS. We watch very calm British murder mysteries, “Grantchester,” a series about a handsome vicar helping a detective solve crimes, and “All Creatures Great and Small,” where veterinarians, farmers and cows are all very nice. The worst anyone gets is persnickety.
“Call the Midwife” is another show where niceness abounds. The birth scenes rattle me so much that no violence or explosions are needed to satisfy the male brain.
The billionaires aim to change our modern culture, but I don’t know if people are ready for “Pete Hegseth’s Totally Awesome War Movie of the Week,” or Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Cavalcade of Miracle Cures.”
“ICE Heroes Will Melt Your Heart’’ might be a regular feature on the “New 60 Minutes,” but I hope not.
Keep your clickers at the ready, folks; you might want to change that channel.
The writer lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at dan.mackie@yahoo.com.
