TV violence. Tabloid TV. Tube-addicted kids. The vast wasteland. On and on. You've seen the headlines, you've had the arguments -- maybe even with your kids -- and then you probably turned on the TV.
All of us, like it or not, are immersed in America's television culture. Not that television, especially the ad-sponsored kind, has bothered to explore itself much -- except in the insider-gossip style of "Entertainment Tonight." There's almost a media taboo against looking at television as a social -- rather than just an entertainment, or even just an economic -- phenomenon.
Now, here comes SIGNAL TO NOISE: Life With Television, a new series
that gives viewers a chance to do more than complain about television
(or about the people who complain about TV). This three-part series is
designed for people who watch and like TV and who are also eager to do
something about and with it.
By taking television culture -- and our role in it -- seriously by asking questions like "How did TV get so commercial?" and "Whose stories does TV tell?" and "How is news constructed?" It asks how TV might be different, and what happens when people try to make different TV. SIGNAL TO NOISE introduces viewers to industry insiders, to media analysts, and to active viewers who have come to interesting and ingenious accommodations with That Box. It takes viewers "behind the screen," from the retooling of a local news show that's ailing in the ratings to one family's multi-generational love affair with soap operas.
We as viewers need to see television critically -- not just negatively
or indifferently -- as a product of human creativity with real social
consequences. SIGNAL TO NOISE offers some approaches, not neat
answers, from viewers like you who want the best out of TV. The
series rides a wave called media literacy, a movement begun by
teachers. Like TV producers, teachers are always talking to people
who have lots of experience with highly crafted, clever entertainment,
who can be impatient and cynical, and who also can and do learn a lot
from their media: kids. Teachers have come to believe that their
students need practice to become "media literate" -- able to decode,
evaluate, analyze, and even produce media. In television, that means
understanding that what we see was made by somebody, often under terms
that permit and limit what they could do. It means understanding what
those terms are and imply, and being able to imagine changing them. It
means, basically, developing the habit of thinking about our media.
These thinking skills, say media literacy advocates, are basic
survival tools for producers, consumers, and citizens in the emerging
Digital Era.
SIGNAL TO NOISE is an example of media literacy, but it's also an
invitation to viewers to extend the experiment. The series is designed
to appeal across generations, so that parents and their kids can watch
it together, using the programs as a springboard for further
conversation.
Don't turn off your television -- reclaim it by learning
more. Television can be an "interactive" activity when viewers know
what they're watching, talk to each other, and get involved.
Pat Aufderheide, an associate professor in the School of Communication at The American University, is a widely-published journalist on media and communications policy. A senior editor of IN THESE TIMES newspaper, she has published in newspapers and magazines ranging from THE WASHINGTON POST to COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW to VARIETY and THE INDEPENDENT. Aufderheide served as an editorial advisor on SIGNAL TO NOISE.