When Duncan Bennett, a Cambridge systems analyst, stopped watching television,
he wanted more time for “real life” than the goggle box. “I appreciate many
people may enjoy television,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s good for me.”
He is far from alone in voicing unease at the nation’s most popular pastime.
Earlier this year Jeremy Paxman dismissed the British public as a “bunch of
barbarians” for watching television rather than reading books or visiting
art galleries.
Paxman, who is believed to earn £1m a year from the small screen, was
promoting his latest TV series and book about Victorian art. His outburst
resonated with middle-class Britons who worry that television is somehow a
malign influence.
But contrary to such views, some critics and academics argue that television
is a powerful agent of change in the world — for the better.
It is a view advanced this month by Charles Kenny, a Washington developmental
economist, who argues that in many places television has proved to be a
remarkable force for political and social good.
After reviewing studies on the impact of television in various countries,
Kenny concludes that it is associated with improved rights for women, higher
school attendance, reduced toleration of local corruption and other benefits.
Although it is difficult to determine cause and effect, it appears that
television is a powerful educator — not through investigative journalism or
public information broadcasts, but from the examples set by characters in
daytime soaps and other popular dramas. In Kenny’s view, “soap operas and
reality shows help solve real-world problems”.
Does popular television add up to more than many think?
A closer observer of the small screen once called it a “vast wasteland of
mayhem, violence, sadism and murder, private eyes, gangsters and more
violence — and cartoons.” That is how Newton Minow, a US television
regulator, described it in 1961. At that time crooner Perry Como was
America’s most popular TV host and Bill and Ben the Flower Pot Men were
stars of British screens.
Since then television language has become more colourful, violence more
explicit and sex more prevalent. Lady Chatterley’s Lover has moved from the
banned book shelf to a classic BBC serial.
Concern over such changing standards has shaped our view of television — and
masked its broader influence in developing countries.
To illustrate its effects, Kenny cites the case of Brazil. When television
there began to show a steady diet of local soaps in the 1970s, Brazilian
women typically had five or more children and were trapped in poverty. As
the popularity of the soaps grew, birth rates fell.
According to researchers, 72% of the leading female characters in the main
soaps had no children and only 7% had more than one. One study calculated
that such soaps had the same effect on fertility rates as keeping girls in
school for five years more than normal.
It is not just birth rates that are affected. Kenny notes: “Kids who watch TV
out of school, according to a World Bank survey of young people in the
shanty towns of Fortaleza in Brazil, are considerably less likely to consume
drugs.”
Television appears to have more power to reduce youth drug use than the
strictures of an educated mother and Brazilian soaps presenting educated
urban women running their own businesses are thought to be compelling role
models.
Television can also improve health, despite the perceived risks of turning
into a couch potato. In Ghana a soap opera line that warned mothers they
were feeding their children “more than just rice” if they did not wash their
hands after defecating was followed by a seemingly permanent improvement in
personal hygiene.
Why do such changes happen? Simple, says Kenny: soap operas, whether local
versions of Ugly Betty or vintage imports of Baywatch, open up new horizons.
“Some hours could be better spent planting trees, helping old ladies across
the road or playing cricket,” he said. “But watching TV exposes people to
new ideas and different people.
“With that will come greater opportunity, growing equality and a better
understanding of the world. Not bad.”
Other academics take a similar view. Nicholas Cull, the British-born professor
of diplomacy at the University of Southern California, said Pop Idol has
given many in the Middle East their first taste of voting. “Today they cast
their votes in popular entertainments,” he said, “tomorrow they could be
demanding to vote for their leaders.”
When the first woman reached the finals of Afghan Star, a Pop Idol clone, the
show’s director claimed it would “do more for women’s rights than all the
dollars we spent on public service announcements for women’s rights on TV”.
For all the power of the internet, television remains a medium that spreads
further and faster. In 2007 about 3 billion people had access to a
television and more than 30m new TV sets are being turned on in Africa and
Asia each year. Demand is so great that in rural Peru soap operas arrived
before a national electricity grid: people powered their new television sets
with car batteries.
In India 50% of households watch television compared with 7% who surf the net.
Such is the spread of television that Ghulam Nabi Azad, India’s health
minister, has promoted it as a form of birth control — not so much through
cultural influence as the sheer practicalities involved.
“In olden days people had no other entertainment but sex, which is why they
produced so many children,” he said earlier this year. “We must get
electricity into every village so, by the time the serials are over, they’ll
be too tired to have sex.”
For all the positive findings, the influence of television is still hotly
debated in developed markets. Some claims for its benefits remain doubtful.
Last week Disney stopped promoting its Baby Einstein DVDs for tots as
“educational”, as it could not prove any such thing. After being threatened
with legal action for “unfair and deceptive practices”, the company is
offering refunds (only in the United States at present) to parents who
bought the DVDs.
Experts in various countries, including Australia, France and the United
States, have recommended limiting the amount of television to which infants
are exposed, or banning them from watching altogether. There is much less
consensus on whether television can have a damaging effect on older viewers.
In particular, experts still dispute whether television violence influences
real behaviour.
Attitudes to viewing seem to be changing, according to Paul Levinson,
professor of communications at Fordham University in New York, a proponent
of “positive television experiences”. Only now, he says, are westerners
overcoming the “Protestant work ethic guilt” about enjoying the medium.
“It’s partly because we now know viewing is not as passive as people always
thought and also because our social fears have switched to a new enemy — the
internet. By comparison, television seems quite benign,” he said.
Television is growing more sociable, others argue. “Big entertainment shows
such as Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor are getting bigger and
bringing people together,” said Thinkbox, the research company. “People are
using Twitter and mobile phones to share their opinions in real time,
creating new communities.”
Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good for You, goes further, saying
television can give you a mental workout. “Popular television shows demand
cognitive work from their audiences to keep up with multiple narrative
threads and character shifts, exercising the mind in ways unthinkable 30
years ago,” he claims.
“In 1981 Hill Street Blues became the first TV show to juggle more than three
extended plot lines per episode and reaped the reward in complaints that it
was too complicated. Now audiences embrace that complexity because we have
been trained by decades of multi-threaded drama. These sell exceptionally
well on DVD, so the market will reward the more demanding shows — and so we shall
see more of them.”
This evolution in attitude towards television is reflected by the willingness
of Barack Obama, the US president, to admit that he follows The Wire, a
complex, gritty crime drama. David Cameron, the Tory leader, said he enjoys
TV thrillers such as the series 24.
The biggest gains are evident in developing countries, although even that has
its limits, of course. Tara McPherson, associate professor of critical
studies at the University of Southern California, said television can
provide “teachable moments” such as when the bully is defeated by a
community of schoolkids. “It even made my grandmother less racist by showing
her people not like her,” she said.
However, in her view even the most magical television cannot counteract
factors such as bad diet, schools without playing fields or neglectful
parents: “That is where television stops and real life starts.”
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