Oh, So Weary

I was ten years old when my family got our first television set. My brother and I were playing catch in the backyard. My mother yelled out the window for us to come in, she had a big surprise for us. As we entered the living room, sitting in the far corner was a huge piece of furniture with a very tiny screen smack dab in the middle of it! And so our love affair with watching T.V. began.

In its infancy, television broadcasting was extremely limited.  If I remember correctly, shows were available only a few hours a day, the rest of the time a test pattern symbol accompanied by an annoying noise was the only choice we had.

From the moment Katilius delivered it, every evening after dinner and baths, we gathered around the television to watch the news and 'a few wholesome shows like 'Howdy Doody' and 'Sky King.'
Saturdays were special because at 7:00 wrestling was on.  Oh how my Baba loved wrestling! She'd cheer loudly for her favorites and boo the ones that, in her opinion, were playing dirty.

For many years, the only violence produced and viewed then was wrestling. Fast-forward to 2018, turn on the T.V. at any time on any day, and all you see is violence! Literally every show, even cartoons, is infiltrated with whacks, smacks, and cruelty. Fighting, bullying, cursing and worse are what lures us to watch. Take that stuff out, and the show in question will suffer miserable ratings and be canceled in the blink of an eye. And let's be honest here, we are all guilty of tuning into programs that scare and offend our sensibilities.

Perhaps the most violent television broadcasting today isn't the weekly shows though, but the daily news. In the beginning, the purpose of the news was to inform and alert, and sometimes even to uplift. Only 15 minutes was allotted for said programming twice daily during the week. I really don't ever remember watching the news on the weekends. Now television networks schedule news programs anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes at a clip, and vie for the bragging rights to present the most recent and most horrific events of the day. "You heard it here first," is commonly expressed so casual viewers will become regulars.

The content of today's news is a constant reporting of shootings, stabbings, killings, drug seller take-downs, cases of domestic and sexual abuse, political bad-mouthing, fraud, and the list goes on and on! Rarely, if ever, is something wholesome presented. After all, who wants to watch good when evil is so much more exciting, right? And because of  the major channels' time extensions, these tragedies are repeated over and over again so that eventually we become numb to the violent world we now live in. When a shooting occurs, we don't flinch, but ask if the victim lived or died. When a child goes missing, we simply assume a family member was responsible and move on, and if a house fire is reported, we wonder if arson was the cause.

It's gotten to the point that I watch the news at noon and skip the rest of the broadcasts. I am so weary of what T.V. stations deem as 'news worthy,' oh, so weary!