Requiem for "The History of Television"

This is the eighth and final installment of The History of Television: A History of Television, but let's face it: The Mayor of Television is just phoning it in at this point, despondent that he hasn't heard from PBS to be on its documentary. It would've been nice if you had joined us from the beginning, but we're glad you joined us nonetheless, and if you're from PBS, throw us a bone, already, huh?

Chapter Eight: TV in the Naughts - and Nowhere Beyond, Because We'll All Soon Be Dead

Television entered the 21st century with a sense of dread, thanks to an innovative, multi-platform, long-running dramedy entitled "The Never-Ending War on Terror," a series uneven in tone and one for which even viewers eventually grew weary, though they found they could do nothing to have the show cancelled. It starred George W. Bush as "A President of the United States" and featured a supporting cast of winsomely bungling Cabinet members and White House staffers whose repeated insistences before Congress of "I don't recall" were intentionally designed to self-referentially recall Sgt. Schultz's comical replies in the '60s series "Hogan's Heroes" of "I know nothink!" (See Chapter Three).

Viewers throughout the country were confused as to why neither the networks nor Democrats in Washington could cancel Bush's TV series for all the execrable excesses, while the brain-dead houseguests on CBS's "Big Brother" were capable of banishing on a weekly basis someone who just kinda hacked them off.

"The Never-Ending War on Terror" inspired a number of more palatable spin-offs, such as Fox's "24," ABC's short-lived "Homeland Security," CBS's "The Unit" and "Jericho," Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," MTV2's "Wonder Showzen" and Funny Or Die's "The Landlord."

This last program pointed to a trend disquieting to those who worked in Television: A substantial number of TV viewers began to get their TV sustenance from the Internets from a variety of gadgets ranging from computers to, well, other computers to, uh, the iPod, which was actually just a very tiny computer. Viewers who once could sit still through an eight-part miniseries on slavery in America were now valiantly struggling to focus their ADD-addled minds on a two minute "LonelyGirl15" episode. America couldn't get enough of things that were short and didn't require much thought! Such was the boon to society that "multi-tasking" viewers were now able to watch TV at work, where in the past all they could do was play Spider Solitaire.

With online content expanding exponentially to the point of causing computer screens to burst (forcing yet another recall of Dell laptops), broadcast and even cable television was on the verge of irrelevance. Some pundits argued that the medium had rendered itself irrelevant by not focusing on broader, more important issues in favor of context-free soundbites and celebrity-gossip bullet points, but these pundits were soon drowned out by yet more context-free soundbites and celebrity-gossip bullet points. Meanwhile, interest in the Internets escalated at a dizzying pace, thanks to its diverse offerings ranging from photos of cats in sinks to photos of cats with Hitler mustaches to LOL cats.

In response, Television responded by updating its own technology, developing 72-inch flatscreen plasma TVs and "high-definition" TVs, which were considered a boon to the industry - not the TV industry, per se, but to the makeup industry: People who looked just fine and even kind of hot on regular TV now had to trowel on pancake makeup by the bucket in order to conceal their wrinkles and bad complexions and overly large pores to the point that they recalled Frank Langella's turn as Skeletor in the movie "Masters of the Universe."

Those touting the new Television technologies pointed out the clarity of their images and movie-theater-like quality of their sound systems. Champions of iPods and online content responded that they preferred the mobility and interactivity offered by their technology, so portable 72-inch flatscreen TVs were rushed into production, including the HDTVPhone, which was quickly withdrawn from the market for further tinkering when a number of early adapters threw out their backs answering phone calls.

Another unanticipated result of the burgeoning micro-technology was the horrific TV Critic Uprising of 2007, in which television critics demanded why they had to cover films on the Internets in addition to their tradition 200+ cable outlets, while their paper's movie critics remained content reviewing three or four movies per week. An uneasy truce was reached - TV critics would cover YouTube, while movie critics would handle the iFilm beat - while Television itself attempted to make nice with online programming by offering it on television itself via shows such as The CW's transformative "Online Nation." But it remained a rocky relationship, given that each episode of "Online Nation" began with the host, Alistair Cooke, declaring, "Here's what you could be watching if you weren't watching TV!"

Hence, the question arises: Where will Television lead us in the future? Or, will it be content to merely follow society's trends? Or, might it simply just get out of the way?

As those questions linger in the air, one's mind drifts back to words written by St. Augustine, all the way back in AD 397, in his "Confessions:"

"I hear Television singing, the varied carols I hear;
"Those of edgy cops -- 'You have the right to remain silent,' as they bust the perp's chops;
"The loutish family man singing fondly of his exasperated spouse, as he stumbles and stumbles again, yet his family loves;
"The comical office drone singing his, as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, but not as he works, for work he does not;
"The dedicated man of medicine singing in jargon OK'd by technical advisors as he scrubs for the O.R. -- the pitchman in paean to his ointments and autos, his beers and burgers;
"The delicious singing of the whimsical single mother -- or of the talk-show hostess singing self-empowerment -- or of the reality star dishing and dissing her peers -- each singing what matters to her, and to none else;
"The infotainment host's song of blockbusters and fallen starlets -- the cartoon rabbit's ode to carrots and beleaguered hunters poor of aim;
"The news anchor's, about scandal in the morning, or scandal at the noon intermission, or scandal at sundown;
"The late-night wit's song, a wry inversion of the day's events;
"Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs. It is all part of Television, glorious Television; it feeds us, it fills our hearts with rapture, and since there are test patterns no more, it simply will not stop."

Indeed, Television's legacy is so vast that it will prove enduring far beyond our lifetimes. Of course, we'll be dead, so we won't really be able to appreciate it, so one would think it scarcely matters.