Compulsory Television

Don't  Blame Television for the People Who  Use It.

As George  Comstock noted in his _Television in America_ ( Second  Edition, 1991), television is something that people watch when they don't have anything better to do. Television  is constructed in such a way as not to require commitment for extended periods of time, such as an hour or two, because that would require the viewer to forgo the possibility of doing  something else on short notice. If someone comes  by, one can turn off the television, and go off with them to do something else. A decent movie has an extended plot which does  not make sense if  one comes in at the  middle. By contrast, sitcoms have little or no dramatic development. There are cable television channels, notably American Movie Classics,  which screen  good movies, back to  back, but I think you would find that AMC is under-represented in the television screens in public places. The same would apply for public broadcasting, BBC imports, etc.  Television was always a bit reluctant about carrying  movies. It did not bid for the first-run  movies. It preferred to show movies at three in the morning. When television made its own movies, they were notoriously bad. Television was always much more oriented to the regularly scheduled show, stressing slapstick comedy. There is only very limited overlap between the marketing side of television and movies, notwithstanding that they share a lot of production facilities, actors, etc.

Traditionally, a first-run movie is sold as an "outing," that is:  hire a baby-sitter, go out for dinner, and go to a movie with about an R rating (NC-17 as they call it now). Nowadays, movies are commonly viewed in the form of rented videotapes, and more recently, as rented videodisks-- more or less like library books, with an ongoing transition to the paperback book model. Effectively, the movie industry is recapitulating the development of the pulp fiction industry in the  late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There are these little handheld videodisk players, with a little screen and earphones, which cost a hundred bucks or so, and allow you to  treat a movie as a kind of paperback book. Of course, you can also watch a  movie on a  laptop computer. The movie industry is having ongoing arguments with its customers, mostly about whether or not  the customers should be expected to go to the  movies, instead of  viewing movies at  home. 

The television industry is in persistent economic difficulties. It is having difficulty retaining the  most desirable advertising demographics, such as young men.  The reason seems to be mostly competition from the internet.  The internet provides such a large assortment of possible activities that it is very difficult to keep up.

It is understandable why people who  run waiting rooms would like television. Television has a coded  message that "your time is of no value." That  is of course convenient for people who have an economic policy of making customers wait around. This means that one has to distinguish between television in waiting rooms and television in other kinds of public spaces. There is an  interesting paper, David Weir's "The Moral Career of the Day  Patient" (in Eric Butterworth and David Weir, eds., _Social Problems of Modern  Britain: An Introductory Reader_, 1972). Weir applies Erving Goffman's theory of institutions (_Asylums_, 1968) to comparatively short-term hospital  visits, such as day surgery, but such an analysis could be extended to a doctor's office visit, or waiting to board an airliner.  Goffman introduced such notions as that of the "greedy institution," which seeks to monopolize the loyalties of its participants. In Goffmanian terms, if you bring along something to a medical waiting room that you can work on, say a manuscript in  the process of being red-penciled, that amounts to telling the doctor that he is not your father-confessor, and it tends to be resented.

Of course, most businesses do not have the luxury of having waiting rooms-- they simply cannot afford to take the customer for granted to that degree. I suppose there must be restaurants which are dominated by television, but I am certainly not  aware of any large chains which do it as a matter of policy.  Restaurant chains are usually intent on moving customers through, not on keeping  them sitting around. Similarly, the high-priced sector of the automobile business is increasingly dominated by car-rental, where the customer has an entirely different relationship to the automobile mechanic. One pattern I have noted on the various high-tech blogs is a certain ongoing controversy over people using personal electronic devices, notably laptops, in places of public accommodation, such as fast food restaurants, coffee shops, etc. This manifests itself in  various directions, eg. WiFi access, electric power  outlets, but the basic question boils down to "camping out," that is, sitting for long periods with only minimal purchases.