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<title> Television:The Magic of Yesterday or The Reality of Today? </title>
Television is something that has gone through a tremnedous change in Sweden over the last two decades. When I was a child there were two channels to chose from, television was run by the state and during daytime nothing was being broadcasted. Today there is an almost infinite number of channels to watch twenty-four hours a day. How does this affect us, the people of Sweden? How has this change affected our lives?
When I was a child, Donald Duck was shown on television every Christmas Eve and this was a major event. Everybody gathered around the TV set and the time for dinner was of course adjusted to suit the longing for animated entertainment, that was only broadcasted once a year. Today you can find cartoons and other childrens programmes on one chanel or the other, any time of day. It seems to me as if the cartoons have lost their magic. 
Talk about magic may seem sentimental to you but in fact I believe that more and more families are beginning to plan their lifes more or less out of the TV table. We will have to wait to have dinner until the kiddy programme is finished, then we will have time to sit down and eat together before the soap and then put the children to sleep before the news start. I find this development a bit strange, since there is always another carton or news broadcast to watch if you missed the first one and the soap opera will be rerun tomrrow. There is nothing magic about something that is constantly within reach.

I sense that there is so much to chose from that it makes us blind for real life. In the early days of television it was, as I said before, something magic. Today it has become a steady companion to many, or simply something to talk about. If you can not find anything else to talk about at the coffee break at work, you talk about the latest soap opera, not about television as a magic phenomenon. You talk about fictive people, fictive situations, in order not to have to talk about your own real, and sometimes boring, life.

Television as a companion, or even a friend, might also be a god thing. I have met people, espcially old and somewhat lonely people, who find in television something to relate to, someone to listen to and engage themselves in. Many people find that the everyday dramas mirror their own lifes and they may help people to look differently upon their own situation.

Television of today brings the world into our very own living roms. Any time of day, we can buy things we did not even know that we needed from TV Shop, directly follow the war going on in another end of the world, let ourselves be entertained by talk show hosts or relax in front of a romantic movie. I think we all need to question our own consummation of television and watch out not to let it become our only reality.

It is easy enough to sit down and let a machine tell you what the world outside is like. Still, it is through loving, laughing and crying for ourselves that we become human beings. The real world is out there, the magic of reality is just outside your window, and it is waiting to be explored by you. Do not let it slip through your fingers while you are busy watching TV.
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