Friday, June 12, 2009

Analog TV rampage and the "book and record"

Analog TV signals will officially be turned off across the country today, as we all know from the barrage of tv advertisements and news stories.

I have found the phraseology of the FCC's public announcements in recent days noteworthy for is urgency. "We are trying our best to provide people, especially those who are most at-risk, with the help they need to make the switch as smoothly as possible."

"At-risk"? Makes it sound like a pandemic, or a hurricane.

Virrtually every media media outlet seems to asking the same rhetorical question today, like this one from the New York Times, "One question looms large: how will TV viewers handle the transition?"

"Handle"? What do they expect? That the 2.8 million, elderly and non-English speakers who are estimated not to have yet installed new receivers may, what, become a rampaging legion of the undead?

Anyway, in tribute to the passing of analog tv, I am embedding below a You Tube video of another "great" entertainment medium that time has passed by and which has been long forgotten: the "book and record."

This one is the 1970s Peter Pan Book and Record titled, "GI Joe: the search for the stolen idol." I bet that almost everyone who was a child in that era would still today exhibit the Pavlovian response of trying to turn the page of a book upon hearing the tell-tale "bing" sound......

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