The laundromat I go to is basically mirrored. It's got top-load machines on opposite ends, front-loaders of increasing expense in the middle, driers running along the side. On one end of the store the TV is in English, on the other it's in Spanish.
The last couple of times I've done my wash stayed mostly on the Spanish side. Why? Okay, since you asked.
It's hard not to be distracted by the TV if it's playing, even though I go with a book. It used to be that if you went early enough the soaps would be playing. But NBC canceled its last soap, Days of Our Lives, at the end of last year.
I've never been a soap follower, but these stagey dramas were their own little world, and benign overall. With the last one gone the timeslot has been handed over to news. And while there's nothing wrong with keeping the public informed, that's not what network news is there to do. I'm not sure it ever was, but especially not now.
On the Spanish side it's entertainment magazine-type shows and―yes, Virginia―telenovelas. People seem to be having a good time, at least, and there's not so much to bug me.
2 comments:
I remember one time seeing a little device for sale that would turn off any television set within a radius of ten feet or so. It sounded like a great investment but since I didn't have to be anywhere regularly that had an annoying tv I didn't bother sending for it.
I understand your reasoning for staying at the Spanish language end of the laundromat. For one thing it's easier to concentrate on reading if you don't understand the background language - or not much of it anyway. The other part, of course, is that English language television has become exponentially more annoying over time. Network news has become frequently dishonest reporting about things you never wanted to know about anyway.. plus, they squawk.
I never watched soaps but telenovelas sound like fun - especially since I really don't understand Spanish.
The device you're talking about is the TV-B-Gone, which has an interesting history. Its inventor, Mitch Altman, was a VR researcher and a colleague of Jaron Lanier. As to its practical applications, I have to imagine that if you turn off the TV in a public place, the owner will just turn it back on. And it usually isn't worth it to have a clicker war.
The weird thing is realizing that Spanish broadcasts might well be more distracting if I had ever achieved fluency in the language like I have with English. Probably still less irritating than Anglophone TV, though. I can picture some public affairs geek in the sixties going "Oh, wouldn't it be great to have news shows running all through the afternoon? Wouldn't everyone be so well-informed?" Well, as it turns out, no they wouldn't be.
From what I understand the main difference is that telenovelas are more limited in duration. By design, not because of ratings.
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