Assassinations. TV at it's best. From Dallas to Saigon to Bucharest, the medium really comes into its own. It's an anachronistic shame the Czechs never caught any of their habitual defenestrations^1,2 on film. Out the window with you. One imagines this the romanticized method of all the TV-Killers out there, hurling the box out a 3rd story window. I suppose they just pull the plug after considering the clean-up. If a filmed and falling TV is displaying itself as it hurtles towards the pavement is there a last flickering awareness at the edge of disolution? No. Only a trigger for a savory moment of Godel, Escher Bach recursiveness.

From my bedroom I can see the 3rd floor attic window of the large old city house across the street. I can see at many strange hours of the night a constantly shifting blue-purple flicker comparable only to the late night flickering of Denethor's Palantir in those hopeless despairing nights of deception. I find it beautiful from a distance. I know of course that upon close examination I'd only find a demographically perfect actor seeking my attention. Far-seeing. Bringing the world closer and yet only aiding and abetting the slip into a solipsism where everyone drifts by on the surface of the bubble.

Even the compressed combustion of sleek aircraft slamming into steel towers on a severe clear day was real only for a morning, before, in the repetiton of images and angles the medium regained control of the story.

I enjoy purposeful television. Not that the content has to have a purpose, but that I do in watching. I've made a decision. This for me is the only issue with the thing. While some numbers show that Americans watch 3.5 - 4.0 hours of television a day, others inform us that a typical home has the box on for almost seven hours. I've been to homes where it is the constant background noise of existence, the lord's comfort to the people in their travail. Deciding to watch ideally involves a decision comparing alternatives and opportunity costs. If I elect to spend four hours a day or one day per week doing this activity, surely I've consciously decided to forgo sleep, books, music, exercise, etc. Of course this doesn't happen. People seem to drift in front of the TV or rest for a moment and time just passes by. Either people don't understand opportunity costs or they have no other opportunities in front of them or they really enjoy television.

My immediate concern is how I can get out of my four hour a day requirement. For it would seem that all Americans must keep up their end of the deal and get their four hours. For myself I've got a solution. The house across the street appears to have their box on at all hours or at least much of the night-time hours in which I witness the flicker. Surely they are lifting the average for the whole street and I can discharge a good portion of my sentence vicariously. My conscience hopes they have weighed the opportunity costs and made a conscious decision, one which I'll support vigorously. I'd like to believe that. If you would like to discharge your far-seeing obligatos guilt-free, I've got evidence that suggests there are ways of opting out and yet keeping our national average up. In these days of holy terror I don't want to be blamed for bringing down any national average -- least of all one so critical to the war effort.

Contrary to some beliefs, it is possible for many Americans to opt out or to lessen their televison viewing without contradicting the 4 hour average. My first thought was to grab the Nielsen data showing the skewed distribution but they are very tight with their data, suspiciously tight. One sees this 4 hour stat bandied about across many a web site pro or con, but my suspicion would be that there are some heavy users out there that inflate the average. But these heavy users are not exactly in the ideal demographic. There are 70 million non-institutionalized Americans over age 16 that are not in the labor force. There are 8 million unemployed who are trying to get a job. Almost all of these will have a TV. Surely they are skewing the daily viewing results. Based on a quick model and assuming that these 70 million watch 6 hours per day and the umeployed watch 5, the 140 million working stiffs can get by on only 2.25 hours. This proves only that the large number of viewers involved provides a significant opportunity for skew.

The second tack one could take is pure statistics. Given a mean of 4.0 hours and 250 million viewers what would a typical probability curve be assuming a normal distribution? Quick calculations using a standard deviation of 1.5 hours (not unreasonable considering the large population) indicate that approx 60 million could get by with 2 or less hours a night and still keep the average up. With those parameters, 95% of the population fits somewhere between 0 and 11 hours.

While that assumption supports the effort, I actually believe the opportunity to be larger. A google on the various combinations of television viewing and standard deviation leads to many sites on university level statistics where they evidently use this TV viewing example a lot. Most appear to have faux-data until I find a reference to the GSS. The General Social Survey is maintained by the University of Chicago and since 1972 has surveyed Americans on a wide range of variables. The data tends to get used a lot in University social science research. The variables are indexed and the keyword television turns up about a decade worth of values on daily viewing hours.

I've selected 3 years (93,96,98) to analyze and graph. The average from this data is just short of 3 hours, not bad for self reporting compared to the Nielsen data collection system. Notice the bulge at five hours. It is believed that African-American viewers watch almost 30-40% more television and this appears to be picking that up.³ I also enjoy the other minor peaks at 8,10 and 12 hours. Hats off to ya. But I'm more interested in the standard deviation: Approx 2.3 hours across the 3 years. Even if the mean is a little off, I think it valid to assume the deviation is similar across samples. This larger and not wholey unexpected value indicates that even more Americans can opt out of or greatly cut back on their viewing hours and leave the heavy lifting to others, presumably the idle rich, and its about time they contributed. I know this has a bit of free-riding to it but as a system I think it works. We keep the average, allowing American business to maintain its marketing dominance, our political masters to thrill us with their lofty rhetoric, everyone has their chance at fame whether on their way to jail or fleeing from flaming debris and I can consciously choose this or this or this.