Okay, Ron. It appears that you have a generally higher opinion of television than I do. Having grown up in a family that listened to a non-commercial radio station when I was a kid (CBC...it has programming without commercials, because it's a government-funded national radio show in Canada) I became accumstomed to hearing programming with no commercial messages from an early age...no jingles, no Coke ads, no car ads, no deoderant ads, just programming...just real content.

Due primarily to that, I always found commercial radio stations pretty obnoxious when I encountered them (usually in other people's cars or in public places, and I have never listened to them much at all, because I really can't stand them.

I grew up without TV also, so again I was not exposed to aggressive commercial marketing of the sort found on TV and commercial radio.

I read hundreds of books, and I read magazines and newspapers. It's very easy to simply ignore any printed advertising in those, and accordingly it doesn't take up any of one's time. It doesn't get in the way of the content.

So...we finally got TV when I was about 18, and I watched quite a bit of it for the next 25 years or so. I had a lot of favorite shows, specially in the 70's, and I think that the standard of TV shows was rather good at that time, and has gradually declined since for the most part. I was always bugged by the advertising, but you couldn't get away from it except by turning down the sound or walking out of the room so I put up with it (grudgingly). I do not want to be interrupted by blurbs about Pepsi-Cola and Brylcreem when I'm trying to follow a storyline.

This is why I love watching movies...which are uninterrupted...as opposed to watching a TV show, which is continually interrupted.

I didn't take the commercials for granted, you see. I notice that most people do, because they've become used to it from a very early age...from the time they were infants, basically. That wasn't my experience.

Around about the late 80's I simply started losing interest in most TV programming altogether (with the exception of specific informational shows or a televised concert, say...), and I stopped watching TV almost completely. I have watched very little since. I will watch something specific if it concerns me, such as some of the recent political debates.

Mostly I use the internet now and newspapers to keep informed, and of course I still read books. I don't have to put up with invasive advertising on those media...nor does it steal any of my "viewing" time.

I have way less tolerance for advertising than the average person, probably because I grew up almost completely free of it.

I think it's outrageous the way North American TV interrupts a show repeatedly with ads. There are counties in Europe where the ads are shown in a group before the show...or after it...but not during the show. That way the viewer can deliberately choose to watch the ads if he wants to, but he doesn't have to put up with them during the show. That results, I have heard, in far more clever and entertaining advertising that what you might see in North America...because it doesn't have a captive audience, you see. It has to attract the viewer on its own merits alone! Good system. I could definitely go for that.

So I have less tolerance for North American TV than you do, and that's probably the main reason that I have a lower opinion of it than you do. I would never say that there's "nothing good" on TV, however. There's bound to be a certain amount of good stuff on any broadcasting medium, I would think.

If I were attempting to set up a totalitarian system of government, I would use all the media which I could in that effort...newspapers, television, radio, books, advertising, government speeches, etc. I would do it by buying out the largest of those media through a network of my rich and powerful friends, and managing and shaping the programming to reflect certain policies and to create certain impressions that aided my plan. I would DEFINITELY expect to reap the most effective propaganda results from TV, however...because it is the medium that grabs the largest amount of the average person's daily attention and focus...and it's visual too. That's powerful. Far more powerful than radio.

I think that your present government knows this well and has taken considerable advantage of it, and that is of concern to me, as I think it should be to all North Americans.

I think it's been happening that way not just since George Bush, but for decades now. It's gotten worse, way worse, since the Reagan era. It is approaching Orwellian proportions under the Bush administration, in my opinion, and it's an extremely dangerous situation.

The rest of the world sees and fears what is occurring in the USA, and how your media are helping it to happen.

It happens here in Canada too, of course, to an extent...although to a much lesser extent. And the stakes are not nearly so high. What occurs in Canada is just mere side-issue to what is occurring in the USA. That's why a significant number of Canadians are literally more concerned about the American election process than about our own...we know that it can affect the entire world.