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<title> Good Television is up to you </title>
In today's society there is the use of Television and there is the abuse. In the Novel Amusing Ourselves to Death the author Neil Postman calls some TV programs "junk entertainment" and by that criticizes the producers of TV. I would say that the responsibility should be the consumers', the watchers'. Depending on what it is that the specific individual wants to get out of TV, active or passive watching, it is up to him or her to decide whether it is "junk" or something else. The users and abusers of Television are the audience, not the producers.
There are different ways of watching Television. When watching actively, we think about what we are seeing and form an opinion on the matters presented, consciously or subconsciously, we agree or disagree with what is said and we care to comment on it. For instance debates between representatives of different political parties can be watched actively. We may create our own arguments and we can compare our point of view with that of the man or woman that support our standpoint or the one who is against it. The program forces us to think. 
Passive watching of Television on the other hand is a state of well being rather than learning something from what we see. When coming home from let us say physical exercise in the evening, it can be a nice way to relax, to calm down, watching a TV show. We do not wish to take an active part in what is happening on the screen, we could as well have relaxed listening to music simply to feel good. Watching TV passively we still deal with the information that gets into our head but on a level that does not require much brain capacity so we do not get stressed. Both active and passive watching can be performed on most any TV program, but in some cases it is more likely that either of them dominates as given in the examples above. We can from this imagine that both active and passive consuming of the Television medium can be positive. 
I think it is the case that all kinds of Television programs can bring something good, however, the author of Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman condemns a whole genre of TV using the term "junk entertainment." My opinion is that in order to condemn something you should look at each individual case and if you do not you are indeed on thin ice generalizing. I agree to the fact that everything presented on Television is not good, there are bad programs and so they should be called bad programs, or to please Mr. Postman, "junk programs". What are "junk programs" then? Something that does not serve the audience in any way I would suppose. Bad programs that consume the watcher rather than the other way around They cause the watcher more harm than good. That would be my definition. A good example to illustrate what I mean would be a boy that watches a TV program telling the story about a boy who meets the girl of his dreams and how he manages to talk to her at last and soon they fall in love with each other. Why does this not happen to me thinks the watching boy and continues to watch. Here it is a case of Television making a person passive in a destructive way. Living one's life through a TV character is not to be recommended. If it is good or bad TV, is still highly subjective and the example above could actually turn out in a different way if there was a different boy watching. One who learnt something from the program and went out the same or the next night to find a girl, who did and who got to share his life with her. Entertainment or not, quality TV it would be.
So to judge TV we have got to consider what it could do for us and experience what it actually does for us. We must know what our purpose of watching TV is. Do we want to be active or passive? I believe that it is each and everyone's mission to get out what we want from TV and to avoid being deceived and involuntarily drawn into a destructive consumption.
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