No other market product has that saturation. Small children watch TV more than they do anything else but sleep. Add to this weight the amount of time we spend listening to the radio, playing music, watching videos, going to the movies, reading books, newspapers, comic books, surfing the Internet, and we begin to understand the power of media to influence and shape ideas and actions. Parks asserts that we turned to media, particularly to TV, to fill voids in our social structure created by the breakdown of the extended family, the mobility of modern families, the anonymity of housing developments and high rises, the drop off in social gatherings. Students are already cynical about the role of media in the culture, but when they see what a profound influence it has in their personal and social lives, they get excited about that awareness, Parks says.
TV is a contradiction and a paradox.
It seems to demand nothing of the viewer, except that it be viewed. Unlike radio, TV requires eye contact, and, really, stasis. It is one-way communication, except through the veto power of the remote, and, ironically, forms the basis for much of the casual social discourse of actual social encounters with real people. TV, as Parks points out in its favor, opens up to everyone, pretty much equally, a window on the world. It allows us to see and experience vicariously world cultures, human differences, geographic variety, events, science, sports, history, the future, to an extent not possible before.