Look, I'm no Luddite. I go to movies. Multimedia praise, drop-down screens, TV technology may be the death of us rather than our key to the future. The virtue of visual media is that they tend to be engaging, stressing concrete images rather than abstract ideas. But they do more than that.
Video tends to stress image over idea.
It is the nature of TV to be fast-paced, not to linger, to constantly move from image to image. Not long ago, I watched Bill Moyers's PBS series Genesis . Moyers is intelligent and thoughtful. Furthermore, he assembled a studio full of thoughtful, intelligent people to discuss passages in Genesis. But the programs tended to be frustrating.