Is Television to Die in the Bottom of a Whiskey Bottle?

It is difficult to stop railing on American media, but it is impossible. I should make a distinction between radio and television and the internet. Maybe I should make a distinction television, the internet, and video games but producers haven’t. A game programmer in California when interviewed a few years ago said the mission statement of their company was to blur the boundaries between reality and video entertainment. Anyone who has read George Orwell knows “Newspeak” is a bad idea. His novel “l984” was a satire of ultimate destiny of world politics and government. The blurring continues, and it has evolved into a full-scale assault on the human senses. No human being can attempt to decipher the deluge of computer graphics juxtaposed onto traditional television programming. Concept has been abandoned in television programming except in one case. Jerry Seinfeld’s comedy performance on Late Night with David Letterman recently, like Jennifer Anniston’s appearance, was a breath of fresh air. It was refreshing to see a comedy routine that embodied “concept.” Concept, like form in classical music, is a structure upon which improvisation can occur. Concept insures the performance will possess integrity and therefore meaning to the viewer. It means simply the routine is not an extemporaneous potpourri of extraneous thoughts with little historical organization. All good art has concept. The majority of media in America has lost its concept. A simple concept would be the presentation of the national nightly news. This is a half hour form, not unlike the situation comedy, but addresses much different needs. It is approaching a national audience, so colloquial issues are inappropriate. Colloquial issues are addressed on local news programs. With the advent of cable television many concepts have been diluted or abandoned completely. Music television, once a ground-breaking national icon, has been demoted to tabloid television. Surfing through the channels one realizes that there is very little delineation between programming. CNN is expanding its programming including the comedy of D.L. Hughley. Not long ago there was a simple, concise, and viable pallet of viable cable programming. I observed it at a Comfort Inn in Black Mountain, North Carolina. They had satellite television service and in addition to the above average audio quality, everything a viewer needed to become informed or entertained was included in 23 basic channels. Then programming was still conceptual, and one would not feel the inherent schizophrenia involved with today’s television viewing. How can viewers not feel this blurring of fantasy and reality and loss of concept cannot be purposeful? Simply it seems the “Stream of Consciousness” style of web-surfing has been applied to traditional television programming concept. No moment seems to be immune from the interruption of future advertising or simple distraction from the intent of the programming. There is a virtual war transpiring between the programming itself and the purveyors of the programming. The producers seem to have no understanding of what their programming is trying to accomplish. It truly is schizophrenic and posses many of the symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder. American Jazz music often it is said died in the bottom of a bottle of a whiskey. Is it time for American television to die in the bottom of a P.C.?