A2 - Wednesday, June 23, 1982 - North Shore News

strictly personal

by Bob Hunter

I WAS 12 YEARS OLD when I saw my first
television set. It was a small screen. Couldn't have
been more than six or eight inches across. It was
mounted in what was otherwise obviously one of
those huge old wooden radios that sat on the

floor.
My entire family — un-
cles, aunts, grandparents,

cousins, at least three dozen
people, counting the
neighbors — had gathered in
my uncle’s living room to
watch as the test pattern
dissolved and the first CBC
broadcast came flickering
eerily across the tiny screen.

God Save the Queen
played. And if my memory is
right, the first show con-
sisted of a ballet. It might
have been Swan Lake.

For the next decade,
roughly, I watched television
every day. And for a long
time, it was always along
with a roomful of people. It
was a cultural event.

When I Love Lucy came
on the air, or the Liberace
Show, the entire neigh-
borhood seemed to gather.

Even after the novelty
began to wear off, it was still
impossible for anyone ac-

tually to watch TV by
themselves. It was like a
tribe taking up position

around a bonfire, only the
light was blue instead of
orange.

The people who lived in
the house next to us were the
first ones on our block to
own a set, and I dare say it
probably ruined = thier
teenage daughter's sex life.

1 don't know how many
evenings I sat on a chair in
thicr livingroom, watching
the TV with one cye, and the
daughter noccking with her
current boyfriend on the
sofa with the other.

It's hard to say which
performance was more
ctnertaining, but the fact
that TV itself was in the
running to be almost as
interesting as the girl next
door's sex life is a striking
measure of yust how far the
medium has shipped since
the carly days, when it had a

gBMp on our attention that
was quite awesome
Ed Sullivan The

Honcymooners These kinds
of shows commanded an
audience That ts. if you
visited someconc’s house, and
the TV was on. everybody
sat around wat hing
the way of life
there

lt was
for a while

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By the 60s, everybody had
a TV of their own, so we
didn't crowd together in any
one particular house any
more. Still, people were so

easily hypnotized by The
Box that I, for ome, was
beginning to hate the
contraption.

I had a feeling I was losing
my mind to it, maybe even
my soul. By then, I Love
Lucy didn’t seem funny any
more.

For years 1 refused to
watch TV. I got quite
snobbish about it. It seemed
to me that it was a sure sign
of intellectual inferiority if
somebody wasted their time
watching the tube.

When my first’ two
children were small,
refused to have a TV in the
house, on the grounds that
their creativity might be
wrecked. I gave in later,
after reading McLuhan,
thinking: In the long run it'll
give them a global con-
sciousness, if only through
the blurring of their sense of
boundaries.

Indeed, I still think that
the ultimate effect of
television will be to heighten
our collective sense of living
together on the same planet

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The end of an era

— so I think it must be
viewed as being a force for
the good, despite itself.

I noticed with my first two
kids that after a few years of
turning into video junkies,
they gradually weaned
themselves, becoming highly
discriminatory about what
they watched, if anything.

In other words, they
followed the same curve of
waning interest as_ their
father. Today it has sunk to
the level that the only things
on television any of us watch

is the news, a_ few
documentares, and, until
recently, a handful of

reasonably good sit-coms,
such as Barney Miller,
M*A*S°H*, WKRP, Soap.
and sometimes Lou Grant.

All of those are gone now,
too. Hey, you know what?
There is absolutely nothing
left to watch on television,
except the factual stuff.

It is now more of a
wasteland than it has ever
been since that day when I
first saw the test pattern
being displaced by actual
moving images.

Some kind of era has
definitely ended.

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Meetings
to protest
business

tax bills

THE DRASTIC conquences
for North Vancouver
businesses of recent exor-
bitant property tax
assessments will be the
subject of a public meeting
tomorrow (Thursday, June

24) sponsored by the North |

Van Chamber of Commerce.

Alarmed by the impact of
the taxes on the ability of
businesses to survive, the
Chamber is calling for a
united front to fight the
unfairness of the situation —
with the possibility of further
businesses being lost and the
additional hardship = such
failures would create.

Tomorrow's meeting will
Start at 7 p.m. in Carson
Graham High School with
the aim of determining and
coordinating action by the
North Van business com-
munity.

The Chamber has urged
all business people to attend
and provide their full
support.

A parallel meeting with
the same objective for West
Vancouver businesses is also
being held tomorrow at 7
p.m. by the West Van
Chamber of Commerce in
the Teachers’ Centre at
Hollyburn Elementary
School.

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