Two thoughts come to mind:
- When our kids were little, we were forced by economic necessity to cancel the Cable for a time. The children howled like wounded animals, but the VCR was in good shape, so we all discovered some great OLD movies at our local library. The young ones were amazed at the classic musicals and compelling stories from the days when writers couldn’t throw in a sex scene or a stream of profanity when the storyline got dull. I got to share my love of Laurel & Hardy with kids who’d never heard of them. All in all, it was a fairly positive experience.
- I’ve worked on the fringes of the media (mostly advertising) for awhile, and can tell you part of the reason for the current state of affairs: The purpose of nearly everything on the tube is to Train The Audience; the programs are loaded with gentle little bits of propaganda designed to reinforce prejudices, shape buying and voting habits, and so on.
Advertisers know that, in the average family,
women make 80% of the buying decisions. Their massive economic power is followed by that of adolescent girls. Pre-marriage-age boys and young men, and their fathers, make up a close and somewhat distant 3rd and 4th place in value to advertisers. Contrary to popular belief, “Public” television – in which programs are “…made possible by a grant from Giganto Corporation and ‘viewers like you’” – is not an “alternative”, but merely offers more of the same, under the guise of seemingly “non-commercial” fare. This is why, in Television-land, Men Are Idiots (even “Spike TV”, supposedly “for men”, fails to present males as anything but pleasure-driven mooks), Teens are Cool, and Women are Savvy and Empowered.
Industry trade magazines knew about the supposed “Gay Rights” movement decades before the general public. Why? Because gays and lesbians – at that time – made roughly $11,000 more annually than “straights” according to the research data, of that had more disposable income than “straights”, and (despite the existence of something called “log-cabin” [gay and lesbian] Republicans) formed a voting bloc that consistently supported left-wing causes. It had – and has – nothing to do with Rights (as defined *on paper * in the US Constitution) whatsoever.
Roughly ninety percent of everything we are allowed to see and hear in the so-called “mainstream” media is controlled by six increasingly-monopolistic corporations – and the number gets smaller over the years (it used to be eleven corporations; before that, it was over twenty, and so on…).
For some, it would take some intestinal fortitude (and for me, unfortunately, it would mean less employment), but maybe a Boycott Of The Industry wouldn’t be a bad thing after all.
Imagine! She’ll have to PLAY with the kids!! 
