The television audience rides its sofas into outer space, into the past and future, and into countless people's private lives. For many, the framing experiences for acquiring social skills and ethical values are no longer based on the experience of the actual. The orienting experiences for those caught under the spell of the television mystique have been reduced to the passive observation of broadcast programming.
Television supplies the developing personality with the cultural mythologies it instinctively seeks.
The assorted tales and fantasies of broadcast programming take on the significance of actualization myths as the subject of the collective viewing ritual. The sacred circle of the television ritual reaches into living rooms across America every night. This is where we establish our common values and how we think about the world. Lacking the transubstantial experiences of the relatively unchanging Greek myths, or even the reassurance of the once dominant Western historical view, the television-dependent personality continually reevaluates the relevance of its ideals and values through the medium of television. Broadcast programming reveals a kind of tribal totem that guarantees entry into society.