I rarely watch tv myself, except for news and the nature shows on Discovery and the like. I have felt the same as you described, hearing people at work discussing popular shows. I never saw even one Seinfeld. The one thing I do value highly is the opportunity to watch movies of my choosing from the video store. There is occasionally one well worth seeing. Overall, thoough, I think you're right, we'd all be better off if they had never been invented. When I was an adolescent, our next door neighbor was a Pentecostal Holiness preacher. They don't watch tv, and I used to try to argue/discuss the subject with him. Now I guess he was right, although neither of us knew why at the time. Some interesting statistics: the average American child watches 6 and a half hours of tv per day. Estimates for the number of violent acts, including murder, that they have seen on tv by the time they start to school range from several thousand to 20 or 30 thousand. No wonder that as they mature (physically at least), violence does not seem so unusual to them. Not all of course, but way too many. One couple that I know decided that their son would not play with toy guns, so he started making them himself out of lego blocks or just a stick. Another very close friend has a child in the second grade who has been very carefully and lovingly parented and has excellent manners. He is obsessed with guns. He doesn't have a real one of his own of course, but he is constantly designing toy ones, some of which actually fire things like spitballs. This causes me much concern, but it also gives me the idea of just how difficult this problem would be to solve.

By all means, if there's a child in the house, blow up the tv.

Chet W.