It’s estimated that the average American now watches more than 4 hours of TV per day, which amounts to approximately 2 solid months a year in front of the idiot box. Many of these sheeple were, no 
doubt, glued to the tube this week for the season premiere of American Idol. Tuesday’s show was the most-watched opening in its six-year history and drew an estimated 37.3 million viewers.
I wasn’t one of them.
Call me weird, but I just don’t care about American Idol. I’ve never watched an entire segment, much less a whole show. When this guy made a guest appearance at this concert, I had to be told he was an American Idol. Whoop-dee-doo. But with the new season underway, I’ve had to stomach several water-cooler discussions about some contestant’s attitude or unjust axing. And it’s pushed me over the edge.
I suppose some would dismiss our fixation as simple amusement. But I think of it as mass hypnosis. Because, while we’re enduring another William Hung on the way to a new Katharine McPhee, something infinitely more important happened. According to NewsMax:
The scientists who mind the Doomsday Clock – symbolizing the annihilation of civilization – moved it two minutes closer to midnight on Wednesday. . .
The Bulletin of the Atomic Sci- entists, which created the Doomsday Clock in 1947, advanced the clock to five minutes until midnight. It was the first adjustment of the clock since 2002.
“We stand at the brink of a second nuclear age,” the group said in a statement.
They pointed to North Korea’s first test of a nuclear weapon last year, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, U.S. flirtation with “bunker buster” nuclear bombs, the continued presence of 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia, and inadequate security for nuclear materials. . .
So while over a third of a billion Americans are tuning in, we are simultaneously tuning out. Who cares about bird flu, runaway asteroids, terrorist plots and suitcase-sized nuclear devices — as long as the recliner’s warm and the changer works, everything’s peachy. Potential vaporization never felt so good.
How is it that we can TIVO out Armageddon and drown out the ticking of the Doomsday Clock with a laugh track? Maybe it’s too big to wrap our mind around or we’re just too numb to care. In 
technical terms, this reaction is called Risk Perception. The theory states that societies attach certain levels of risk or indifference to specific threats. More recently this has been called, the Dread Factor. The more potentially dreadful, devastating or personally threatening a risk appears, the more we take notice.
Why are we so mesmerized by game shows, sit-coms and reality TV? Why do we flock to the cineplex and obsess over the next American Narcissist? Because it quells the Dread Factor.
Television shapes the way we think, the way we live. It is now estimated that the manufacture of televisions is equal to the birth rate. No wonder Americans live in a type of inebriated technological daze, hypnotized by our iPods, cell phones and home theater systems, pacified by prime-time programming, a sedated dreamworld as detached from reality as Oz was Kansas. We are simply coping.
Oh well. Every village has its idiots. But, at least, we’ve got our Idols. Go ahead, let the Doomsday Clock strike midnight. Now that I’ve got the Season Six Spoiler Thread, the Apocalypse seems far, far away.
Springsteen thought he was saying something all those years ago….”Fifty-seven channels and nothing on.”
I had to spend nearly a week tethered to a hospital bed recently. Since I have the most basic cable package at home, I thought I might take advantage of the 100 channel offering and adjustable bed.
There’s still absolutely nothing on TV. The bed was kinda cool though.
sometimes, after their dad has left with my girls for the weekend, i’ll sit in the recliner with the remote and try to find something to watch – hardly ever do – often end up just turning it off.
i have never seen american idol or even an ad for it. i have our tv’s programmed to only hit the kids chanels, the animal planet chanel, and hgtv, tlc, and the cooking chanel. we never hit network tv – not missing a thing.
still, with such a conservative selection, i still have to watch out for the commercials – i have trained my girls well to turn off the tv or computer if anything appears they don’t know about – good or bad.
like mike said, there’s just not much worth watching – wow, are there a lot of wasted brain cells out there!!!
And this from that great theological piece, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory:
The most important thing we’ve learned
So far as children are concerned
Is never, never, never let
Them near your television set –
Or better still, just don’t install
The idiotic thing at all. . .
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they’re hypnotized by it,
Until they’re absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk. . .
‘All right!’ you’ll cry. ‘All right!’ you’ll say,
‘But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!’
We’ll answer this by asking you,
‘What used the darling ones to do?
‘How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?’
Have you forgotten?
Don’t you know?
We’ll say it very loud and slow:
They used to read.
They’d read and read and read and read and then proceed
To read some more.
OK, being the contrarian I am, I just have to say that this is not an “either/or” — life is not divided into people who watch American Idol and people who care about the Doomsday Clock. Unless I am a complete anomaly.
I love American Idol. I watch it often (not quite religiously, but …).
I also read the stories (and did some additional research) on the Doomsday Clock. It troubles me. Keeps me up nights, frankly.
But why does that make American Idol a bad thing? Or iPods? Or home theatres? (I don’t have either of the last two, by the way.)
I watch Idol for the same reason I read the news (including stories about the Doomsday Clock) — for that much needed input into my brain that keeps my stories real, informed, and (hopefully) interesting.
Plus I also dig it. (Idol, not the clock.) And in a world where a Doomsday Clock exists, I’m glad there’s also American Idol to break up the tension.
Hey, I appreciate the comments, Mike! I’ve got a couple TV’s in my house, which should tell you I’m either being satirical, skeptical or hypocritical (or possibly a combination of all three). But if the average American really watches over 4 hours of television a day, then someone is using about three and a fifteen minutes of mine. Which is why I rant. . .
Television, like any technological tool, has a double-edge. I just happen to feel that the down-side of TV far outweighs the upside. Not only does the tube contribute to physical immobility (i.e. laziness, sloth and obesity), it affects HOW we think (see Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman), and becomes a medium for propaganda to the masses. To me, shows like American Idol fuel a type of innate voyeurism in which needless info and events are staged that, ultimately, have no inspirational, spiritual or eternal value whatsoever. In twenty years, who cares where Ruben Studdard is? Only the same media entity that produced him and uses him for ratings. . .
Mind you, these opinions are coming from a rabid sports fan and someone who thinks that the Twilight Zone was the best program ever!
Thanks for your opinions, Mike. Grace and Blessings!
Mike E.,
I’m with you. I love AI as well. My days consist mostly of these things: reading my Bible in the morning, home schooling my girls (that means reading lots of good books together), working on my novel, making dinner for my family, trying to read some fiction and non-fiction, driving the kids to various activities, and doing church stuff. And then, on American Idol night, my teenager and I, and sometimes my hubby too, curl up on couches and laugh our heads off at American Idol. We try to guess the winner. We dance around the tv room. We munch pop corn or ice cream.
I can’t wait for Jesus to come back. I pray for missionaries and weep over the evil in the world. But, yeah, I love AI (and may have a small crush on Simon.)
I watch very little TV. I don’t know who’s popular, what shows are good or anything. I do watch the news in the morning and a little of HGTV in bed at night. I like the decorating shows. The only thing I do watch other than that, is American Idol. Talk about a place to gather character studies! 🙂
Only Ane Mulligan could watch AI and call it research!
There are people who make the same argument against those of us who “waste time” reading fiction.
Shouldn’t we be doing something more useful? Got to have entertainment. All work and no play is no good either. But four hours? I’m lucky if I watch four hours a month. I probably watch that much a year. I do however, spend lots of time reading for entertainment. Not so different depending.
Mike: Just an observation — I found it amusing that you lament America’s obsession with American Idol while atomic scientists proclaim the human race is closer than ever to annihilation, yet your previous post addresses your obsession with all things athletic. As someone who doesn’t care about A.I. or sports, I just found it amusing.
Now I’m off to play Bookworm on Yahoo! Games.
😉
I watch about 3-4 hours worth of sports a week, Jules. I’m in a basketball league and the first section of the newspaper I read every morning is the sports page. Didn’t mean to imply I’m plastered in front of the tube watching sports all day. But if you’re suggesting I’m a hypocrite, you’d be spot on. 😉
Mike: **Hypocrite** is such a harsh word. And I guess it wasn’t so much about pasting butts to the couch watching TV (whether singing shows or sports) as it was about immersing ourselves in a dying culture. We celebrate athletics, we celebrate celebrities (some of whom actually do have talent, and aren’t famous for being famous), but how many of us really know what is going on around us?
You know, we don’t have cable television or rabbit ears. I’d get rid of the television all together if I could, but the kids own a ton of DVDs, and I use the TV for homeschooling. But I have internet, and waste a lot of time reading up on stuff that doesn’t matter. I know all about the Paula Abdul was-she-or-wasn’t-she-drunk scandal. I know “Dreamgirls” was snubbed for the Best Picture Oscar. I even know that Angelina Jolie was really stand-offish during an interview with E!’s Ryan Seacrest. I saw the video — online.
But, OK, I also know that the Senate is about to pass on nonbinding resolution against Bush sending 22,000 more troops to Iraq. I know that Scooter Libby’s defense team is saying he was sacrificed to save Rove’s ass. I know that educated white women are more likely to get married than non-educated women of any race, though marriage rates have dropped in the last 45 years. I know the state I live in wants to consolidate school districts and have one central county board of education, which then takes away local power.
And then I think — in terms of eternity, what does any of this matter?
But just to cover myself a bit, I do read The Word. Yet sadly, I spend more time reading about things that, yeah, make me culturally literate (both pop and political and social), but don’t feed my soul.
So, Mike, if **you’re** a hypocrite, I’m a bigger hypocrite.
ooops … I added “social” to that list as an afterthought, so now “both” doesn’t add up. Duh. Sorry.
“I spend more time reading about things that, yeah, make me culturally literate (both pop and political and social), but don’t feed my soul.”
Mike Duran, Excellent observations you have about our still very young world of electronic gadgets that imminently are going to rule humanking totally, unless…we act intelligently and don’t let that happen.
TV it’s ok, but not as a way of scaping reality. Ipod’s are a wonderful way of storing tons of music and playing it, as I do via a set of speakers, BYW amazing, clear sound!
Cell Phones, are a necessary evil, jeje. People usually just talk nonsense through them, not the necessary communication that they were intended to convey.
I’m with you and people who want to refresh their minds from this flooding of high speed communication and American idol nonsense should read some Thoreau’s walden and realise that life and it’s necessaries are what makes life worth living it. We are getting away from the essentials, meaning communicating with loved ones, instead of being glued to the computer screen or tv, or to the ipod’s etc.
Cheers and again wonderful article! 🙂
Mike Duran, I forgot something regarding American Idol:
I don’t mean to be nasty but some of the singers are good, indeed really good, but they lack what is necessary to become unique, real stars.
They just interpret good songs with good vocals but that’s it.
And even though some great singers-songwriters of the past like Neil diamond, Barry Manilow and even Brian May of Queen have participated in it, I do think they did because of $$$$$$
We are flooded with all those wonderful hi-tech sintethisers, yet the great songwriters, the great bands of the past are gone…which is indeed ironic.
“But lo! men have become the tools of their tools. ”
Henry David thoreau.
We live in and exciting yet boring and frutiless age for humanity. Everything is about money, meaning greed.