A Tripp not worth taking. Ric Flair bodyslams N.C. governor's race. The cultural point of no return has long since passed with television. Evaluating the real pros and cons of our television culture cannot be assessed in first-person viewing habits. Television is not driven by any one individual's preferences for anything.
Television is mass driven with one real commodity, mass attention.
That's what advertising money pays for - a chance to flash an image, a message, into the attention spans of mass audiences. To capture mass attention and manipulate it, television has no man-made equal. That is tremendous power. What bothers me is the trend in the electronic entertainment industry to become increasingly based on a fascist economy. Fewer and fewer people are making decisions that tangibly impact more and more people.