TV molds viewers says critic Amory
Cleveland Amory, a critic, author and television personality, and Dr. Lee S. Dreyfus, president of Wisconsin State University at Stevens Point and member of the board of the National Association of Educational broadcasters, said commercial television is molding and belittling the audience.
The two spoke at the third annual symposium on Issues in Public Communication sponsored by the speech communication and human relations department of the KU department of speech and drama.
The conference, titled "Television and the New Persuasion," continued with discussions by Arthur L. Smith, professor of speech at U.C.L.A., and Lawrence W. Rosenfield, professor of speech at the University of Wisconsin.
Chancellor E. Laurence Chalmers opened the symposium with a challenge to consider the impact of the media in opinion formulation and to seek comprehensive coverage of issues in the proper perspective.
Amory, illustrating his topic, "TV: The Medium Medium," with satirical critiques of TV's old movies, television advertising and what he termed TV's three worst programs, said public educational television presents a great threat to commercial TV.
Speaking on "The New Man-Made Environment," Dreyfus said the viewer is being molded by television into a being with "expressway mental."
In the morning discussion, he maintained audiences throughout the world are adapting to the total
Amory speaks at media symposium
2 KANSAN July 21 1970
emotional and informative environment created by all of the electronic media and are conditioned to strictly scheduled routine.
TV Guide critic Cleveland Amory was among those who spoke at a symposium on Issues in Public Communication last week. Amory said commercial television was "belittling its audience."
Amory said the "universal fault" of commercial TV is that it tries to create programs to please the entire audience and too often ends up with a product which pleases no one.
Public television, he argued, can and should present controversial subjects in debate form, appealing to a narrower, more specific audience. Because it depends on grants and contributions for its survival, Amory said; public TV is free from the pressures placed on commercial television by advertisers and rating systems.
Photo by Greg Sorber
The critic cited his choices of the 10 best programs of 1969 in presenting his favorable views on public television. Seven of the top 10 shows he selected were public TV productions.
Commercial television, Amory said, belittles the viewer by failing to present challenging programming. He added that audience response to magazine concept programs such as "60 Minutes," and "First Tuesday" show that viewers want more thought-provoking programming.
Dreyfus said television, which now stretches throughout the world, was rapidly creating a homogeneous society. Referring to the McLuhan concept of the global village, he said TV has a tribalizing effect on societies. That is, the values and sources of communication within the once-diverse societies have become the same.
Immersed in this environment, Dreyfus said, the audience expects to see, hear, and be everywhere. Knowledge of happenings around the world and in outer space are no longer shocking.
Dreyfus said the only means of psychological survival in this total electronic environment was to question and criticize the presentations of the media. He called on audiences to combat the "ideological fall-out" of the media by learning to relate to it as critical analysis and to once again let the mind direct the media rather than having the media direct the mind.
Television created an awareness of problems in American society in the 1960's and at the same time served as a primary polarizing agent, Arthur L. Smith, assistant professor of speech communication at U.C.L.A. and editor for the "Journal for Black Studies," said in the program of the second day of the symposium.
Speaking on "Television and the Tactics of the Black Revolution," Smith said television and the black movement rose to each other in the early sixties because each realized the other could be used advantageously.
The result, Smith said, was the creation of a militant black audience. For the first time, black viewers could see members of their community being disbursed for conducting non-violent demonstrations and barred from public service facilities.
Blacks began to debate within themselves about where they stood on the issues. They weighed the traditional prudent approach
of avoiding the confrontations against the conscientious view of involvement. Many blacks, Smith said, took the view that they could not stand by while their brothers were being attacked and injured.
In other attitudinal conflicts blacks came to realize that human rights were being sacrificed to property rights every time a lunch counter was cleared of blacks, that private interests were surpassing the public interest of equality under the law, and that the choices of separation or integration were set bluntly before them.
The pen name "Mark Twain" was first used by New Orleans newspaper columnist Isaiah Sellers, then later by Sam Clemens.