Capturing your attention-and holding it-is the prime motive of most television programming and enhances its role as a profitable advertising vehicle. Programmers live in constant fear of losing anyone\'s attention-anyone\'s. The surest way to avoid doing so is to keep everything brief, not to strain the attention of anyone but instead to provide constant stimulation through variety. novelty, action and movement. Quite simply, television operates on the appeal to the short attention span It is simply the easiest way out. But it has come to be regarded as a given, as inherent in the medium itself; as an imperative, as though General Sarnoff, or one of the other august pioneers of video, had bequeathed(遗留:传于) to us tablets of stone commanding that nothing in televisie shall ever require more than a few moments\ Concentration In its place that is fine. Who can quarrel with a medium that so brilliantly packages escapist entertainment as a mass-marketing tool? But I see its values now pervading this nation and its life. It has become fashionable to think that, like fast food, fast ideas are the way to get to a moving, patient public In the case of news, this practice, in my view, results in inefficient communication. I question how much of television\'s nightly news effort is really absorbable and understandable. Much o it is what has been aptly described as machine-gunning with scraps. I think the technique fights coherence. I think it tends to make things ultimately boring (unless they are accompanies by horrifying pictures)because almost anything is boring if you know almost nothing about it I believe that Tv\'s appeal to the short attention span is not only inefficient nication but decivilizing as well. Consider the casual assumptions that television tends ultivate that complexity must be avoided, that visual stimulation is a substitute for thought, that verbal precision is an anachronism. It may be old-fashioned, but I was taught that thought is word n grammatically There is a crisis of literacy in this country. One study estimates that some 30 million adult Americans are functionally illiterate\ and cannot read or write well enough to answer the want ad or understand the instructions on a medicine bottle Literacy may not be an inalienable human right, but it is one that the highly literate founding Fathers might not have found unreasonable or even unattainable. We are not only not attaining it as a nation, statistically speaking, but we are falling further and further short of attaining it. And, while i would not be so simplistic as to suggest that television is the cause, I believe it contributes and is an influence Everything about this nation-the structure of the society, its forms of family organization, its economy, its place in the world- has become more complex, not less. Yet its dominating communications instrument, its principal form of national linkage, is one that sells neat resolutions to human problems that usually have no neat resolutions. It is all symbolized in my mind by the hugely successful art form that television has made central to the culture, theCapturing your attention-and holding it-is the prime motive of most television programming and enhances its role as a profitable advertising vehicle. Programmers live in constant fear of losing anyone\'s attention-anyone\'s. The surest way to avoid doing so is to keep everything brief, not to strain the attention of anyone but instead to provide constant stimulation through variety, novelty, action and movement. Quite simply, television operates on the appeal to the short attention span. It is simply the easiest way out. But it has come to be regarded as a given, as inherent in the medium itself; as an imperative, as though General Sarnoff, or one of the other august pioneers of video, had bequeathed（遗留；传于） to us tablets of stone commanding that nothing in television shall ever require more than a few moments\' Concentration. In its place that is fine. Who can quarrel with a medium that so brilliantly packages escapist entertainment as a mass-marketing tool? But I see its values now pervading this nation and its life. It has become fashionable to think that, like fast food, fast ideas are the way to get to a fast-moving, impatient public. In the case of news, this practice, in my view, results in inefficient communication. I question how much of television\'s nightly news effort is really absorbable and understandable. Much of it is what has been aptly described as \"machine-gunning with scraps.\" I think the technique fights coherence. I think it tends to make things ultimately boring (unless they are accompanied by horrifying pictures) because almost anything is boring if you know almost nothing about it. I believe that TV\'s appeal to the short attention span is not only inefficient communication but decivilizing as well. Consider the casual assumptions that television tends to cultivate: that complexity must be avoided, that visual stimulation is a substitute for thought, that verbal precision is an anachronism. It may be old-fashioned, but I was taught that thought is words, arranged in grammatically precise. There is a crisis of literacy in this country. One study estimates that some 30 million adult Americans are \"functionally illiterate\" and cannot read or write well enough to answer the want ad or understand the instructions on a medicine bottle. Literacy may not be an inalienable human right, but it is one that the highly literate Founding Fathers might not have found unreasonable or even unattainable. We are not only not attaining it as a nation, statistically speaking, but we are falling further and further short of attaining it. And, while I would not be so simplistic as to suggest that television is the cause, I believe it contributes and is an influence. Everything about this nation-the structure of the society, its forms of family organization, its economy, its place in the world- has become more complex, not less. Yet its dominating communications instrument, its principal form of national linkage, is one that sells neat resolutions to human problems that usually have no neat resolutions. It is all symbolized in my mind by the hugely successful art form that television has made central to the culture, the