American sheeple watch over 8hrs of TV per day

Boxed in

DESPITE an increase in entertainment choices, watching television remains as popular as ever, according to data from the OECD's Communications Outlook report. American households watch the box for over eight hours a day on average, twice as long as anyone else. Viewing has fallen in some countries. Turks reportedly watched an hour's less television per day in 2007 than they did only two years earlier, when the country was America's nearest rival as couch-potato king.

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www.economist.com...

Over 8 hours!

The following quote are extracts from [p. 82, Joyce Nelson, THE PERFECT MACHINE; New Society Pub., 1992, 800-253-3605; ISBN 0-86571-235-2 ]

The fact that TV is a source not actively or critically attended to was made dramatically evident in the late 1960s by an experiment that rocked the world of political and product advertising and forever changed the ways in which the television medium would be used. The results of the experiment still reverberate through the industry long after its somewhat primitive methods have been perfected.

In November 1969, a researcher named Herbert Krugman, who later became manager of public-opinion research at General Electric headquarters in Connecticut, decided to try to discover what goes on physiologically in the brain of a person watching TV. He elicited the co-operation of a twenty-two-year-old secretary and taped a single electrode to the back of her head. The wire from this electrode connected to a Grass Model 7 Polygraph, which in turn interfaced with a Honeywell 7600 computer and a CAT 400B computer.

Flicking on the TV, Krugman began monitoring the brain-waves of the subject What he found through repeated trials was that within about thirty seconds, the brain-waves switched from predominantly beta waves, indicating alert and conscious attention, to predominantly alpha waves, indicating an unfocused, receptive lack of attention: the state of aimless fantasy and daydreaming below the threshold of consciousness. When Krugman's subject turned to reading through a magazine, beta waves reappeared, indicating that conscious and alert attentiveness had replaced the daydreaming state.

What surprised Krugman, who had set out to test some McLuhanesque hypotheses about the nature of TV-viewing, was how rapidly the alpha-state emerged. Further research revealed that the brain's left hemisphere, which processes information logically and analytically, tunes out while the person is watching TV. This tuning-out allows the right hemisphere of the brain, which processes information emotionally and noncritically, to function unimpeded. 'It appears,' wrote Krugman in a report of his findings, 'that the mode of response to television is more or less constant and very different from the response to print. That is, the basic electrical response of the brain is clearly to the medium and not to content difference.... [Television is] a communication medium that effortlessly transmits huge quantities of information not thought about at the time of exposure.'

Soon, dozens of agencies were engaged in their own research into the television-brain phenomenon and its implications. The findings led to a complete overhaul in the theories, techniques, and practices that had structured the advertising industry and, to an extent, the entire television industry. The key phrase in Krugman's findings was that TV transmits 'information not thought about at the time of exposure.'

[p.p. 69-70]

As Herbert Krugman noted in the research that transformed the industry, we do not consciously or rationally attend to the material resonating with our unconscious depths at the time of transmission. Later, however, when we encounter a store display, or a real-life situation like one in an ad, or a name on a ballot that conjures up our television experience of the candidate, a wealth of associations is triggered. Schwartz explains: 'The function of a display in the store is to recall the consumer's experience of the product in the commercial.... You don't ask for a product: The product asks for you! That is, a person's recall of a commercial is evoked by the product itself, visible on a shelf or island display, interacting with the stored data in his brain.' Just as in Julian Jaynes's ancient cultures, where the internally heard speech of the gods was prompted by props like the corpse of a chieftain or a statue, so, too, our internalized media echoes are triggered by products, props, or situations in the environment.

As real-life experience is increasingly replaced by the mediated 'experience' of television-viewing, it becomes easy for politicians and market-researchers of all sorts to rely on a base of mediated mass experience that can be evoked by appropriate triggers. The TV 'world' becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: the mass mind takes shape, its participants acting according to media-derived impulses and believing them to be their own personal volition arising out of their own desires and needs. In such a situation, whoever controls the screen controls the future, the past, and the present.

The following quotes are from [MEDIA SEXPLOITATION, Key, 1976]

Women are carefully trained by media to view themselves as inadequate. They are taught that other women—through the purchases of clothes, cosmetics, food, vocations, avocations, education, etc.—are more desirable and feminine than themselves. Her need to constantly reverify her sexual adequacy though the purchase of merchandise becomes an overwhelming preoccupation, profitable for the merchandisers, but potentially disastrous for the individual.

North American society has a vested interest in reinforcing an individual's failure to achieve sexual maturity. By exploiting unconscious fears, forcing them to repress sexual taboos, the media guarantees blind repressed seeking for value substitutes through commercial products and consumption. Sexual repression, as reinforced by the media, is a most viable marketing technology.

Repressed sexual fear, much like all types of repression, makes humans highly vulnerable to subliminal management and control technology. Through subliminal appeals and reinforcements of these fears, some consumers can be induced into buying almost anything.

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That's insane! I mean when do they work, sleep?

I have just cancelled my digital subscription and I am amazed at how much more time I have to do things. Even the small amount I was watching was affecting my quality of life.

I do miss the rugby and cricket coverage but that just means I have an excuse to head down to my local pub if there is something imortant to watch.

TV is not evil, however surely that amount of viewing must lead to some kind of Reality Disconnection eventually ie. if you spend so much time in a fantasy world, reality becomes less and less important.

I rarely ever watch tv, but my hubby is glued to the tube from the minute he gets home from work, until bedtime. TV doesn't do anything for me, but if you take away my stereo, then we've got big problems. I listen to the stereo from when I get up, till when I go to bed. My kids aren't big tv watchers either.

I watch alot of History - Science - NatGeo - Mixed with Travel and Food Channels.

More or less catching various segments as I complete various tasks, Variously.


I feel TV in a proper use environment can yield a big potential benefit, however if you only watch reality TV, sitcoms, and cartoons, your most likely not grasping the full potential of yourself.

[edit on 25-9-2009 by 10001011]

I know so many parents, that picked their kids up from school, take them home, sit them in front of the everloving, and I'm sure IQ lowering spongebob, till they fall asleep, then wake up go to school, and spongebob again...

When I was a kid I was at the swimming pool, riding bikes, skateboards, building forts, and treehouses.

These kids these days are like woah... bad!

For the broad range...

8 hours Sleep
8 hours TV
8 Hours School, Work, or making up TV time for the rest of US!


I didn't think it was really that bad, I don't watch TV though, unless it's like an occasional movie and such 2 a week.

The TV is brainwashing people?

Yeah, ok. If you want to blame something else rather than dealing with the real problems, I suppose the TV makes about as good a scapegoat devil machine to blame our ills on as anything else.

How do they still have time to go on the internet ?

It's not the amount of TV people watch that bothers me, its what they watch. I guarantee you those 8 hours arent spent watching the history channel, or discovery. they are spent watching shows that would lower Einstein IQ to 100.

im not saying 8 hours TV is okay, it definitely is not, but if they atleast watched something that improved them as people then it would atleast have been excusable.

i watch less then 10 hours a week. and i dont feel like im missing anything that important.

reply to post by warrenb


I dont know if I believe this, I mean there cant be enough hours in a lifestlyle to do this, can there??



America's future is here.....



I would laugh but its not that far from the truth.

[edit on 25-9-2009 by XXXN3O]

I would be willing to bet those numbers are highly inaccurate. How do you think they gather their data? Who are the people they question and gather data from? I watch maybe 5 hours a WEEK. Most people I know would fall into 2-3 hours a day MAX.

Originally posted by SpaceGoatsFarts
How do they still have time to go on the internet ?

First...I love your avatar....how funny

Second , the problem with the younger generation and the internet is that most of them are on facebook

I quit watching TV back in February and it has been great, don't miss it. I did however buy all the box sets of Family Guy so I could laugh. Which is important espically with all the bad stuff going on. I even see humor here even though we know were in a mess....it is good for the spirit and mental state and physical state to laugh.

I would give you a star warrenb ,but don't you have like a million?
A flag anyways for the post !

I usually have my TV on in the background most of the day but I'm not watching anything, does that count as too much? There's a handful of shows that I do watch through out the week that I really don't like to be disturbed while watching, other than that I could turn it off and not think twice about it.

I've got a friend that just gets sucked in when he watches TV to the point where you can't even speak with him, he really doesn't hear anything you say. When I notice him doing this I'll start talking crap about him to test if he's just ignoring me, nope he doesn't even respond when I use his name. When he snaps out of it he actually expects me to start my story over again which I refuse to do, it's just weird to me, most of the time I find it funny but it can be frustrating.

8 hours a day seems highly doubtful. A person wouldn't have time for anything else except work, tv and sleep.

Besides he is using a two year old graph for an article about what we do today. Not exactly an accurate means of detemining how much tv a person watched in 2009.

reply to post by jd140


I don't know about you but for everyone I know their lives completely revolve around those three things. Work, T.V., eating/sleeping. My girlfriend watches T.V. all day, unless she is at work, but from the time she gets up to the time she goes to bed its T.V. T.V. T.V.

Its the preferred drug of the masses, and it works just like most other drugs. Gets its user hooked young and then their addicted for life.

We should all throw out our T.V. sets and start reading more. If we could make the switch there would be less idiots and more logical analytical citizens who aren't so easily fooled into believing in this fantasy world that has been built up around them.


[edit on 25-9-2009 by caballero]

I get my shows from netflix and I watch my news online does that count? If so I would only be watching like about 1 hour and 30 minutes of television a day. That probably doesn't amount to much. I doubt the prestige of that survey. Would they do anything else other than television? I mean there are only a limited hours in the day. I read books. I play video games. I don't have 8 hours to do all of that... that sounds insane.

I don't watch 8 hrs a day.. I get 15 if i am lucky enough to actually wanna see the weather.. and that isn't everyday.

I can't even imagine an unemployed or retired person watches 8 hours of TV a *day*. If I watch 8 hours in a WEEK that's a lot for me. Most people I know don't watch a lot of TV either, and I doubt I know very many at all who watch more than an hour or two a day on average.

When I do watch TV though, about one or two nights a week, it's often 2-3 hours in one sitting. I'll record whatever I wanted to see during the week and watch it in one or two nights all at once. I can see adding to that if you are into sports, but I'm not, so I don't watch the games.

BTW, I live in Canada, which that chart claims is at just under 4 hours a day.

I haven't had tv broadcast in my home(except for WC time) in almost 5 years. Before that I may have turned it on three or four times a week. When I took custody of my daughter, I cut it off. She isn't going to be raised by the idiot box. She can read at a level better than some adults I know. She also constantly amazes people with her knowledge of many things and her vocabulary. She's 9.

When she goes to her Grandmothers, she gets to watch tv. There are times when I can stand next to her and call her name to get her attention and I may as well talk to the wall. I walk over and turn of the idiot box and just state...

"That is why we don't have tv in our house."

I've actually had parents of some of her friends tell me that I am depriving her of an important part of childhood.

A video that happens to be almost 20 years old sums it better than I could.



May not agree with all premises in there but he nails it.

Not to be picky or anything but that word is actually spelled"Sheople" a combination of sheep and people.

I saw it on television spelled that way.

These numbers have to be off, way off. The only way this works is if people like my wife who leave the television on while doing other things is counted as "watching" television. It's just background noise to her. I hate it when she does that, as it uses electricity, but whatever.

I don't even know anyone with free 8 hours a day to watch TV. We have lawns to mow, jobs to work, food to eat, etc. I am sure that there are people who watch more than 8 a day, but to average out to 8 a day amongst all of us. Nope! Can't believe it at all.

And to caballero, I'm not so sure about this reading thing as the cure either. I've seen people sucked into reading more so than television. Of course, if they are reading about math, science or history to solve the world's problems, then fine. But reading Harry Potter and saying that is healthy, I don't know. What's the difference between written word of fiction and acted out fiction?