The Idiot Box

The apple falling on a young Sir Isaac Newton’s head in the late 1600s and Billy, an ADHD stricken 13 year old American boy on the verge of obesity, switching on his television set while munching on potato chips in the mid 1900s can easily be considered the two most prominent and ground breaking incidents in the history of mankind.

Much like any other innovation of man, the television too along with the gift of technology brings with it its own share of evil.

From a far fetched idea to a commodity just for the elite to becoming a basic need synonymous to food and water, from the world war to globalization to recession to the World Wide Web, the television has witnessed and withstood it all.

From the most powerful CEO of the wealthiest company to its lowest level employee if there is one thing common after they both go home is the activity of switching on the television set and relishing the same set of channels, such is the power of television.

The father of media and advertisement, the advent of television till date keeps defining and redefining the concept of accessibility and viewer ship through its far reaching and lustrous form of entertainment, of which the whole world has fallen prey today, Mr. Jenkins and Farnsworth, can proudly say.

It is often quite truly said that the moment we switch on our television sets, we shut down our brains. The television simply redefined the concept that “seeing is believing”, it brought about a revolution and almost all sponsors started fighting for a space inside the formerly grotesque box in the corner of the room, which has today evolved into a window to the world.

From death defying stunts to moral shaking reality TV shows, from informative news to rich documentaries and the latest media sensations, the television ignited the spark which gun fired the beginning of a mad rat race with the ultimate objective of featuring on the idiot box for one and all.