The Winds of Change: Is TV Losing Its Importance?

Boy, you’ve got to love technology. When I was a kid growing up, I can remember a geography/social studies textbook called Far Away Lands and Their People. That’s not the case anymore. Take Tuesday’s tornado in Oklahoma City, for example. While that storm was still on the ground, live pictures were being beamed around the world. Think about that. Someone across the world was watching the same storm at the same moment as someone who lives in the path of the tornado. That doesn’t include the millions who watched it streaming live online.
In their book How to Be Like Walt: Capturing the Disney Magic Everyday of Your Life, Pat Williams and Jim Denny say the difference between today and tomorrow is change (Walt Disney to my generation is what Thomas Edison was the my ancestors). To seize the future, we must do three things: embrace change, identify ideas and trends that produce change, and learn to effectively plan for change.
I come from a generation that created a lot of that change, yet seems reluctant to accept it. I cut my journalistic teeth on typewriters, carbon paper, and correction fluid. If you wanted the news, you had to wait until six or ten. Today, people get it as it happens. And they aren’t just disinterested bystanders, either. Blogs, emails, and video sharing allow them to become part of the news: sharing their stories, pictures, and feelings with the touch of a button. These are indeed fascinating times. Former FCC Chairman Newton Minnow once called TV “a vast wasteland”. I wonder what he’d say about it today? That maybe it’s losing its importance? During the recent inauguration of President Obama, news websites took an estimated 73-million hits during the swearing-in ceremony: 73 million people watching an event that lasted less than a minute!
Technology seems to be advancing faster than we can keep up with it. Former news producer-turned-media-guru Deborah Potter has just written an article entitled, “Mind the Gap”. It talks about how the lack of digital know-how at the top limits both newsrooms and classrooms. Potter sums it up very succinctly: “We’re online, but we’re not really plugged in.” At least, not like our kids are. Younger people are getting their news faster and in ways parents could never have imagined.
But is technology advancing too quickly? Even if I wanted to, I don’t think I’ll live long enough to learn everything. It’s like the dilemma I came across years ago concerning “information overload”. The writer was pointing out that it would take five days to read every news article in a typical Sunday metropolitan newspaper. In the meantime, you have several days worth of papers stacked up, waiting to be read.
I know a lot of people who are simply afraid of the technology. They still haven’t figured out how to program their VCR. It’s not always about fear, though. I don’t use a cell phone. It’s not that I’m afraid of it: I just enjoy the quiet time away from the noise and interruptions. And, I don’t text. It’s not that I can’t. I just think texting while driving a car or operating a power tool is a bad idea. And these advances in technology carry a price. It saddens me to think that my children will never know what it looks like when a TV station signs-off at night or begins each day with The National Anthem. They will never know the fascination of using a piece of aluminum foil stretched between the rabbit ears antenna to improve reception. But then again, they’ve never seen bad reception, either.
And so it is with mixed feelings that I look toward the future: I marvel at what lies ahead, but mourn the passing of those things we leave behind.
Those are my thoughts. What are yours?

Downing Bolls