1 The Medium of Television
characteristic of man’s knowledge of himself at present, for he does not show on the medium aspects that do not yet seem true to him and shows others that he finds acceptable. Television as means of expression is far more important than television as means of communication.
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Because the medium of television is so interwoven with man’s mind, one can be distinguished from the other only when the set is dead—that is, off—and has become an object that has assumed its static features. Indeed a television set alive is no longer a set: the image filling the sensory space of viewers forces them into dialogues that reduce perception of the set as such to a negligible minimum. To talk of the medium of television is in a way to talk of man the perceiver, the responder, the expander, and the processer of messages.
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Producers and engineers as people belong to the category of viewers and as such filter the impacts of what is on and around the screen when it is alive. The medium never gains total independence, and viewers never really experience electrons acting of their free will on a luminescent screen. There are always minds as part of the medium, and viewing is always to a certain extent brainwashing.
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In many instances, the showing of certain subjects on television may allow no time for editing and no time for selecting viewpoints from which to shape what is being imposed by circumstances. Instant transmission of raw-life makes rawlife expression the object of one’s experiencing, the experience of men experiencing whatever they are in. This experience by
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