Watching Tv - Report of New York Daily News

John-Michael Patacsil

February 13, 2013

Watching Television

According to the New York Daily News, the average American over the age of two watches television up to thirty-four hours a week (Hinckley). In 2005, author Steven Johnson wrote “Watching TV Makes You Smarter” arguing that watching television improves cognitive abilities. Movie critic for Slate, Dana Stevens, wrote “Thinking Outside the Idiot Box” in response to Johnson’s article, arguing that television is neither educational nor destructive to ones intelligence. Watching television doesn’t necessarily affect your intelligence, but merely gives viewers more information about future episodes of the program and because we watch television purely for entertainment and to stay current with sports, news, or other events.

Johnson, in his article “Watching TV Makes You Smarter” published in the New York Times addresses the topic of television and argues that watching current television with intricate thoughts can make you smarter. Johnson supports this claim by referring to the “Sleeper Curve” which is paying attention to detail, making inferences, and tracking social relationships in television shows; talking about recent and past television shows to show how we’ve grown in complexity in our television shows; and by showing specialized visual charts (Johnson 279-280). He uses the show 24 on Fox network as an example of how current television has changed and how it takes an intelligent person to follow a show like 24 by making inferences from past episodes, tracking shifting social relationships, and following the plot of the show (Johnson 280). He also uses the example of multiple threading in the form of a plot diagram which shows us attention, patience, retention, and parsing of narrative threads (Johnson 280). He shows us plot diagrams of past shows like Starsky and Hutch and shows how the threading in any episodes is basic and straightforward. Then he shows us another plot diagram showing us episode 85 from Hill Street Blues and shows us how the show has multiple threads that are woven together making the episode complex making us think with intricate thoughts (Johnson 281).

Stevens, movie critic for Slate, wrote “Thinking Outside the Idiot Box” in response to Johnson’s claims and argues that television does not make one more or less intelligent but is merely used for entertainment. She refutes Johnson’s examples of how television makes one smarter, belittles the plot diagram of multiple threading, and by showing us her background knowledge of watching television because it’s her profession. Her purpose is to critique Johnson’s article in order to inform the public that watching television does not affect intelligence. She uses an informal tone for her audience, the readers of Slate and others interested in the topic of television.