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<title> Television viewing </title>
"Television, as I have implied earlier, serves us most usefully when presenting junk entertainment; it serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse- news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion- and turns them into entertainment packages. We would all be better off if television got worse, not better." I think Neil Postman is right in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death. The problem is that we watch too much television and in my essay I am going to talk about the following questions: Why do people watch so much TV? What kinds of programmes are there on TV? Why don't we read books instead?

My first point is that people watch too much TV and they become lazy and overweighted, since the content of the TV is so bad that you are not able to do anything. People think they can take it easy in front of the TV after work, but by watching TV you become enervated, slack and uninvolved.

When you sit in front of the TV and it comes a real piece of news with deep consideration and an important message, it is so heavy and deep that you cannot take in the information in your condition. That is why TV does not concentrate on such deep programmes. Instead they show programmes with simple messages which are easy to understand with humour. These are called entertainment programmes. The programmes that have good news features are often televised during the worst viewing hours of the day.

My second point is that TV shows many different programmes with mixed contents. The channel on TV that presents most junk entertainment is TV3. News is televised for three minutes and some of this news is only said on this channel. TV3 news televises nothing about what happens in the world like other channels do. TV3 also have lots of commercial advertising. For example in a movie there are advertising every half an hour and most of the time there are the same short commercials. I think that TV3 is just an entertainment channel with bad and noninformative news. I have found one good thing with this channel and that is their good movies.

Channels like SVT1 and SVT2 show most news programmes, debate programmes and information programmes. These channels are also free from commercial advertising and I think that is very good, because all people do not want to be disturbed by that between every programme. Another channel that also have good news programmes is TV4. This channel has very mixed contents and their news can be compared with SVT1 and SVT2. If you want to see news it does not matter if you watch SVT or TV4 because they are almost the same.

If you compare different channels there are often men who introduce programmes on SVT and women on TV4. I think it sounds more serious and stricter if it is a man who presents the programme on TV. Girls and women have a more silly behaviour and they can laugh very easily and it can sound more amusing when they talk. I think it is easier just to watch girls and women on TV, for example look at their hairdo, the make-up and the clothes and not listen to what they really say.

My last point is that if people read a book after work or in their leisure time, instead of watching TV, they would get another type of rest. When you read, the body can rest and the brain can work. The same thing happens when you sleep, the body is relaxed and the brain works when you are dreaming. When you have read a book for a while you get alert, provided that the book is good, and you can then do other things like exercise.

There are people who are very satisfied with their life by watching TV the whole day. Luckily there are also people who cannot sit and watch TV on and on, as I think it is. I watch very little TV. I am a televiewer who like to see programmes, news and films that give something and convey a message. But anyway I think TV is good, because a picture says more than thousand words.
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