I’m not a deranged anti-TV zealot. I’ll admit I was tempted to raise my children without a television, and I’ll admit that I was a bit envious when all our TV-less friends watched their kids sashay into Phi Beta Kappa, because they spent their childhoods reading and thinking. But I couldn’t do it. I like TV. I can watch about 30 minutes of almost any sports event, exception made for ESPN’s stultifying College World Series. In addition, I can accommodate one TV show at a time. When “Justified’’ ended, I made the leap to “Intelligence,’’ streaming on Netflix. I watched both seasons pronto and am now in the market for a show to follow, maybe.
What’s my beef? In my book, “good TV’’ is an oxymoron. That’s my criticism of public television, which is generally much better than its commercial counterpart: It is still television. You are still sitting there, passively absorbing whatever soothing, corporatist pap the nice people at Archer Daniels Midland, Chevron, or some railway monopoly want you to hear.
Public TV is to television as Nantucket Nectars is to Coca-Cola. The “nectar,’’ a “real product with real ingredients,’’ has up to 33 grams of sugar in 8 ounces. Coke, which is quite modest about any nutritional claims for its ebony-colored swill, has 27 grams of sugar. The nectar is the PBS NewsHour. Coke is the CBS Evening News. Similar product, different pretensions.
Radio? Not the same. First off, you can do a lot while listening to radio: drive to work, bake a cake, or watch television. (Joke.) Even 21st-century radio remains a medium of dreams. I still listen to baseball games on the radio. It’s delightful and suspenseful. Ronald Reagan, a gifted fantasist, got his start creating imaginary “play-by-play’’ baseball coverage for radio, based on a telegraphic account of a faraway game.
