Households of the United States have attained the highest TV ownership rate on the earth today per-capita. These numbers are over ninety-nine percent in owning at minimum one, and nearing an average of three TV sets being in each home. These sets are usually turned on, (whether they are watched or not) for periods of almost seven solid hours per day at average, and thus the term of couch potato being used is used regularly. Not too far from truth is it?
Recent surveys discover sixty percent, (or even more possibly) of the U. S. General population is able to name all of the members from a comedy team like the nineteen-thirties era Three Stooges, but under fifteen percent of that same number surveyed are able to name any three of the sitting Justices of the United States Supreme Court. Modern television viewing habits have been seen as aiding developmentally in this in recent times.
The television was actually made available commercially during the early nineteen-thirties. With the first full and actual public broadcasts being made in nineteen thirty-six from the Olympic Games that were held in Berlin Germany. These were made to government run stations both in that city, and that of Leipzig as well. The broadcasts availed the games to viewing for the first time to any nations populace. Due mainly to the sheer cost of them, and a general lack of programming, the TV did not make any real headway into regular peoples homes until after world war two during the nineteen-fifties and early sixties.
With sales growth in TV sets skyrocketing, the television began to develop itself into an advertising tool that remains unmatched. In recent years and currently, broadcasters are using up to a full thirty-percent or even more of their available broadcast time for advertising and sales. The average viewer or young child in the U. S. Today sees as many as twenty thousand or even more, thirty second commercials each and every year. The results can be shown in the effects on our restaurants, retailers, and even manufacturers, at the base of our whole economy itself. If you have been into a chain, or fast-food restaurant recently, and you would NOT have gone but for the children’s asking of you, in their quest to get the newest toy or prize offered with a meal you already hold proof.
The average American youth spends nearly nine hundred hours per year in school. Now, comparing this to the fact that the same young child is spending very near, or more than seventeen hundred hours watching a television during the same years time frame! Since the early part of the nineteen-seventies, disparity in numbers like these has been advanced very steadily. Additions of various inventions like these; the DVD, the VCR, Blu-Ray systems, DVR and the like, we are rapidly adding to the already high numbers over recent years.
The television can definitely be used as a valuable tool in learning, tele-communications, and many other things. With its over use as a social crutch, or simple distraction, its greatest flaws and detriments can be seen. The American public needs to be made aware of this and try to monitor viewing for far more productive things.
