Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

22
Significance Junkies
We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder
whether delusion is not more consoling.
Henri Poincare (1854-1912)
Ihope no one will consider me unduly cynical if I assert that a
good first-order model of how commercial and public television
programming work is simply this: money is everything. In prime
time, a single rating point difference is worth millions of dollars in
advertising. Especially since the early 1980s, television has
become almost entirely profit-motivated. You can see this, say, in
the decline of network news and news specials, or in the pathetic
evasions that the major networks offered to circumvent a Federal
Communications Commission mandate that they improve the
level of children's programming. (For example, educational virtues
were asserted for a cartoon series that systematically misrepresents
the technology and lifestyles of our Pleistocene ancestors,
and that portrays dinosaurs as pets.) As I write, public television
in America is in real danger of losing government support, and the
content of commercial programming is in the course of a steep,
long-term dumbing down.
In this perspective, fighting for more real science on television
seems naive and forlorn. But owners of networks and television
producers have children and grandchildren about whose future
they rightly worry. They must feel some responsibility for the
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