Television brings people together – at least it used to.
Photo: Photocase/Brilliant Eye
Discipline is in bad shape. At school anyway. Those authoritarian bones that made entire generations of students tremble have long since retired or are buried. People also try to avoid this secondary virtue in the workplace – at least officially. Anyone who has to compete with other companies for employees invokes the “team spirit”, not the spirit of subordination. Yes, even in the Bundeswehr they prefer to talk about “citizens in uniform” rather than cadaver obedience.
When it comes to leisure activities, obedience has a particularly bad hand. That was different. Just 20 years ago, television was the great dictator. It didn’t even need to give orders. All it took was the mere hint that a certain program would be shown on a certain day at a certain time – and hordes of people canceled their dates or left the pub early. Missing out on your favorite show would have ruined the day.
Such behavior was less antisocial than it might appear. As a single you might be sitting in front of the flicker box, but you weren’t alone. Hundreds of thousands, often millions, did the same. Watching television was a parallel collective experience. The next day you would discuss what you had seen with work colleagues and friends. This explains the success of regular programs like the “Harald Schmidt Show”. It was a ritual that thrived on as many people as possible taking part. In this way, supposedly anti-social television brought people closer together.
At the same time, it promoted the audience’s frugality and frustration tolerance. Binge watching, which is popular today, is an expression of addictive behavior. Like a junkie, you binge watch entire seasons of a series non-stop on your days off. In the pre-streaming times, however, you had to mentally come to terms with the fact that the current episode ended at the most exciting moment and that you wouldn’t find out how the cliffhanger was resolved until a week later. This taught patience. One learned: Instant gratification is not always possible. A piece of wisdom that is in danger of being forgotten in the age of total consumption.
Yes, television itself is being forgotten. When it comes to teenagers’ media choices, television hardly plays a role anymore. This is not just because of the program. Anyone who grew up with YouTube, Netflix, Snapchat, Tiktok, podcasts, blogs and vlogs has internalized that content can be accessed at any time. So why should you let an anonymous authority that calls itself a “television channel” dictate when you have to watch a certain program! How old-fashioned is that! Like driving a carriage on a highway.
No, the picture doesn’t fit. In fact, television is to social media and streaming services as rural public transport is to private transport. We remember: As long as people in the villages were dependent on public transport, they were used extensively. To do this, numerous stopovers and detours via remote beetles were accepted. But at the moment when everyone could afford a car (even if it was just an ancient Polo that had passed the MOT with a bang), people said goodbye to the bus driver.
Television faces a similar fate. It no longer fits today’s lifestyle. No reforms can help against this, only the opposite: museum processing. The consistent preservation of the previous status quo – programs like those in the 70s, 80s and 90s. In this way, may television remind us of what the world once looked like! Back before the digital madness hit us.
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