Television is a convenient source of entertainment, and a comparatively cheap one. People will not have to pay for seats in a movie theater; and let’s face it, movie tickets are still more costly.

　　Television keeps one informed about current events and updated with the latest development of science and politics. Television, together with the many channels now cable TV provides offers an endless series of programs, which are both instructive and entertaining. A lot of television programs introduce people to things they have never thought of before and have never heard of before.

　　Watching TV is much more entertaining than before. For one we have many more channels than in the past and the size of the TVs is just getting bigger and bigger. 10 years ago, you’ll be lucky if your family had a 29 inch color TV that looked like a hideous wooden box. But now, 70 inches plasma or LCD(Liquid Crystal Display) TVs that look no thicken than a dictionary can be easily affordable. And, at the same time, the programs on TV are just getting increasingly entertaining with the cutting edge technologies used in editing. Even the used-to-be-boring commercial breaks are now full of high-tech flavor. Sometimes, I would just wait to see my favorite TV commercials by Adidas, Nike, Pepsi, etc.

　　Television made many literary masterpieces popular as they are adapted to TV series. And it provides special instructive programs such as language teaching, sewing, painting, cosmetics, etc. Programs on Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, and the like, popularize science among TV viewers. People all over the world are no longer distant and isolated from each other. The most distant countries and the strangest customs are brought right into one’s sitting-room. So in this sense, TV is tearing down national boundaries and cultural barriers and bringing us into a global community of sharing and understanding.

　　When people are the most busy, when we work the hardest, we need some sort of passive way of relaxing ourselves. And TV comes in just handy. And the traditional flaw of TV programs not being able to be watched again is more or less solved today as people are using Tivo or Apple TV to book and record their favorite programs by means of a Cable TV Network or iTune Store.

　　电视的危害

　　Television is a great time waster. When you’re glued to the “tube”, you don’t even realize how much time passes by idly. You find the more you slough as a couch potato, the less things you get done and the less willing you’re in getting things done.

　　People who don’t watch TV are happier than those who watch it because television leaves the viewers nothing to spare, nothing left. In a way, when you receive information without judgment, you’re being brainwashed and manipulated by TV programs, especially TV commercials.

　　Television is to blame. Children nowadays find no points in learning to read and write largely because they’re addicted to the kind of picture and sound communication TV presents. And a lot of parents use TV as a pacifier for their children. They place the kids in front of the TV and don’t care whether they’re watching utterly rubbishy commercials or scenes of violence and sex as long as the children are quiet. This is selfishly irresponsible.

　　Television obstructs people’s communication because many programs require absolute silence and attention and no one dares to open his mouth during a program.

　　Television is undoubtedly a great invention, but one of the main controversies about its effect on modern people’s lives is that viewers are not selective enough. When you allow all kinds of information, useful or meaningless, to bombard you, you lose initiative in the process.

　　You sit for hour after hour and you get very receptive and very unquestioning and it seems to me the important thing in life is to be active, to do things, to think things and to be as creative as possible, and television, in a way, prevents all these.

　　Television is doing irreparable harm. Before we let this “one-eye monster” into our homes, we never found it difficult to occupy our spare time. We used to enjoy civilized pleasures, we used to have hobbies, and used to entertain our friends and be entertained by them. We used to read books and listen to music and talk to our family. But now we rush home just to gulp down our meals to be in time for this or that program. We have even given up sitting at the table and having a leisurely evening meal, exchanging what happened to each and everyone of us during the day.

　　I think in a way TV is making our minds dull. There’s a limit to the amount of creative talent available in the world. Everyday, television consumes vast quantities of creative genius in us. When millions of people around the world watch the same program (sometimes a poorly choreographed one), the whole world becomes a village, and society is reduced to a pre-literate condition. We become utterly dependent on the two most primitive media of communication: pictures and spoken words. And we become so lazy, we choose to spend a fine day in semi-darkness, glued to the tube, rather than go out into the world.