I watched a little TV last night.<\/p>\n
Not particularly notable until you also know that I don’t have a television and haven’t for more than ten years. So thisis actually a confession of sorts, an admission of weakness, a reflection of guilt.<\/p>\n
Whatever.\u00c2\u00a0I watched four Twilight Zone episodes online last night: Flight 33<\/a>, Where Is Everybody<\/a>, Masks<\/a> and (of course) To Serve Man<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0Probably a waste of time (in that post-middle-age puritanical perspective I have about TV), but there it is: I did it.<\/p>\n And it got me to thinking…<\/p>\n Fifty Years Ago!<\/strong> The first episode I watched was broadcast in 1961. It’s a great story\u00e2\u20ac\u201djust as entertaining today as it certainly was back then. Tell me that 50 years from now (ok, 49) anyone is going to be watching the blech that’s shown on TV today.<\/p>\n Before Commercials Were King.<\/strong> Each of these episodes were about 26 minutes long\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00ef\u00bb\u00bftwenty-six minutes of programming in a thirty minute time slot. An approach to TV where the programming<\/em> is the focus rather than the commercials<\/em>. Imagine that.<\/p>\n Short Attention Span.<\/strong> On the other hand: twenty-six minutes!? I need to sit still for twenty-six minutes to watch these? TV or no, I am a product of this epoch, and my attention span has been shrinking for years. I found myself fast forwarding to get to the “punch line” of the episodes. (Admittedly, I watched four in a row and didn’t want to sit there for two hours; nevertheless, I could feel my short attention span pulling my hand to the mouse from the beginning.)<\/p>\n 3. Black and White.<\/strong> When I was a child, in addition to walking thru waist-deep snow to get to my classes, we didn’t have a TV until I was 10. And even then it was black and white. For years, I didn’t know that the Wizard of Oz was in color. (Ok, maybe that’s not true.) Still, today I’m sure most kids would be shocked at the prospect of black-and-white-only programming, to which I respond: “Go watch one of those Twilight Zone episodes and see if you feel deprived (or, of course, watch Hitchcock).<\/p>\n So there you have it. I’ve expunged my pangs of guilt by transforming my lost time last night into some analysis, unproductive analysis perhaps, nothing that knocks off socks, but analysis nevertheless.<\/p>\n And now I’ll get up and go work in the yard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I watched a little TV last night. Not particularly notable until you also know that I don’t have a television and haven’t for more than ten years. So thisis actually a confession of sorts, an admission of weakness, a reflection of guilt. Whatever.\u00c2\u00a0I watched four Twilight Zone episodes online last night: Flight 33, Where Is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[40],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":566,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions\/566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}