South Philly Review

It is said when times are rough, we try to escape from reality. During The Great Depression, people flocked to the movies to see fluff with over-the-top dance routines choreographed by Busby Berkeley. Rough times are upon us again. Never has it been easier to escape reality, but nowadays we escape it so often we rarely confront it anymore.

Our much-ballyhooed American creativity is directed mainly toward developing gadgets to distract us. In the ’60s, Dr. Timothy Leary urged his followers to take LSD so they could turn on and tune out. Today, all we need is an iPod. Hardly a moment goes by when we are not being entertained. If we are not tweeting, we are on Facebook, where we convince ourselves every humdrum moment is of intense interest to everyone else.

There is hardly ever a time for quiet contemplation. If there is one thing we can’t stand, it is to be alone with our thoughts. Whether walking along the street or riding in our cars, we grab our cell phones and indulge in idle chatter to fill the silence. We are addicted to distraction.

Television has been around as our main distraction for a long time. Back in the ’50s, the then-chairman of the Federal Communications Commission called TV “a vast wasteland.” He should see it now. He would be singing along with Bruce Springsteen about there being 500 channels and nothing on. At least back in the day, there were live television dramas like “Playhouse 90” and “Studio One.” Live TV is almost totally extinct. The “CSI” and “Law & Order” franchises are what pass today for television drama.

At one time, the advent of pay TV (now called cable) held out the hope it would be free from commercials. It was assumed if you paid for television service, there would be no need for commercial revenue. PRISM, which later morphed into Comcast Cable and AMC (the American Movie Channel) started out free from commercial interruption. No more. Other than Turner Classic Movies, unless you pay an additional fee for so-called premium channels, you can expect as many commercials on cable as on “free” TV.

Aside from commercials, much of the content on TV is a goulash of escapist crime shows, situation comedies, sports, and so-called “reality” TV. Sometimes we are even distracted from the main distraction. The big topic the day after the Super Bowl is not so much the game, but the commercials.

As far as reality TV, just whose reality is it — likely not yours or mine. Reality TV is just more escapism cloaked in the trappings of faux reality. It’s main advantage is it’s cheaper for the networks to produce. The problem is best illustrated by the popular “Jersey Shore.” The concept was to follow ordinary, working class 20-somethings on summer vacation at the Shore. With the popularity came celebrity. Soon Snooki and her friends began making guest appearances on other shows. The new contract calls for each of the kids to make $10,000 an episode. If the reality of the show was ever genuine, the success of the formerly unknown Snooki and her friends ensures “Jersey Shore” will become just another show about the effects of instant celebrity, not the reality of young adults.

Even television news has fallen victim to the need to entertain. No one really tunes in to the local news anymore for hard news. The local news is to hard news what Jackie Collins is to literature. Take the ever-expanding weather forecast. It may be hard to believe, but it was once a 30-second throw-in at the end of a newscast. Weather now has become the prime ingredient.

Despite the problem predicting the weather more than three days out, the forecast has expanded until the four main weather persons on local TV, around the beginning of December, now are expected to forecast for the entire winter, complete with bogus snowfall estimates. Each local forecast has an abundance of colorful graphs and charts with the information culled from the same computer models and packaged with catchy names such as “Earthwatch.” This is a country involved in two wars, but you would hardly know it by the local news.

News was once the prestigious jewel. Network execs did not expect the news department to turn a profit, that was the job of the entertainment division. News has become part of the entertainment today, vying against the 24-hour cable networks and each other for the advertising dollar. The result is the gutting of once-great news operations. Many of the so-called news shows such as “Dateline” and “20/20” are indistinguishable from the distractions offered by the rest of network programming, routinely dealing with crime and entertainment as much as hard news.

Cable news is not immune from the need to attract dollars. The head of Fox News, Roger Ailes, in response to a charge the network routinely distorts the news, claimed his only interest is in ratings. Ratings attract dollars. To get dollars, you must entertain. To entertain, you often distract more than inform.

Our epitaph will one day simply read, “America was a great country, but it got distracted.”