Frank

I was homophobic in early high school. I had learned it from conservative parents and fearful friends. Later in high school, from exposure to other more open-minded friends, I started questioning why I hated gay people.

During that soul searching, coincidentally, I came across C-SPAN's coverage of the gay and lesbian march on Washington (ca. 1993). I became engrossed, spending an entire weekend watching it.

Families, musicians, politicians and countless others swarmed the National Mall, 300,000 strong, to demand equal rights and protection for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals. Undoubtedly, not everyone at the march was homosexual, but it gave me a human face to put on the homosexual characterization and stereotype I had created, which made it difficult to harbor hate toward that lifestyle.

That was years ago and my homophobia went the way of the monster that lived under my bed when I was 7. (For those of you still scared of the dark. That means it went away.) Nowadays, I ponder: Why was I watching C-SPAN when I was 17?

You might respond, "Well, isn't that what all the journalism geeks did when they weren't working on the school paper or writing essays to accompany their college applications." As far as I know that might be a good retort, but I was not a journalism-geek, or any other type. I was that guy who appeared in class about once a week in high school, to challenge the teacher and generally make every one feel uncomfortable. Given the amount of consistent effort, I shouldn't have graduated but somehow through the power of multiple-choice and an innate ability to bullshit, they gave me their "Good Luck" diploma.

But back to the quandary at hand: I certainly did not make a habit out of watching C-SPAN so how did I come across the march? When the answer hit me, it slapped a smile on my face.

I have been using my satellite digital video recording (DVR) system so long that I had forgotten I used to have to channel surf. I used to have to comb through the stations one by one to find something interesting. Even if I knew the exact channel I wanted, typing in the numbers didn't always guarantee I would get right where I wanted.

I don't know how many times something like the following scenario would play out. I want to go to station 27. I hit the 2 button, but the remote is too sensitive and puts me on channel 22. Instead of hitting the up button five times, I lazily punch in 27. This time it puts me on a fuzzy channel 77 and I'm stuck trying to figure out how to get back to the 20's with a remote that hates me. But without this struggle and the ensuing channel surfing, I wouldn't have come across C-SPAN's coverage of the march.

Don't get me wrong. I love the advances in TV technology and I love my DVR. It makes my whole television viewing experience better. I no longer have to decide between missing out on life to watch my favorite shows or missing out on the shows to enjoy life. I just program my DVR to record the shows and I watch them when I want to watch. I zap commercials away, shrinking 30-minute shows into 20 minutes.

I don't have to rush in to the kitchen during commercial breaks to make a snack. I stop the program. This is equivalently the difference between the abacus and the computer when this type of TV watching is compared to the type I had as a kid with rabbit ears picking up four channels that would get fuzzy if the blender was used or god forbid the air popcorn popper. I spent more than one evening torn between the temptations of salty, buttered popcorn and the Peanuts Special.

Not having to channel surf is another benefit, although with today's systems we info-search and that has his own means of distraction. It's useful to hit a button and see most of the information needed to determine if it's worth watching, but sometimes there is just nothing on so I end up spending 10 minutes reading about movies instead of watching anything. If I wanted to read to be entertained, I'd go pick up a novel; at least with channel surfing I was being entertained for a minute or two at a time.

Another problematic blessing with info-surfing is the search ability. These problems can go like this. My son saw a commercial for a movie that he wants to watch, let's say "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves." He tells me he wants to watch it but of course he can't tell me the channel, date or time. He probably didn't even know the title but describes a pale lady with a bunch of short guys around her. I haven't heard of a new Tim Burton movie, so I assume he means "Snow White."

Typing in letters with the remote is a pain so I choose one word to search for. ‘Snow' and ‘white' seem too vague and ‘dwarves' is…well let's just say, I'm not sure if I'm spelling it correctly now. So I choose ‘seven.' "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves" isn't any where on the list (come to find out later it was a commercial for the DVD). But there is the movie "Se7en." For curiosity's sake, I pull up the information on it. No dwarves but hey, Brad Pitt with Morgan Freeman. It just started so I turn to it. Ten minutes later I realize I'm watching a serial killer drama while my son plays with blocks a few feet away waiting for a dwarf infested fairy tale.

I guess the short and long of it is that the evolution of TV watching has some draw backs but mostly it has become something more enjoyable and useful. Take my son for example. He won't have to put up with only a few fuzzy channels but he might get jaded by a few minutes of a movie that I didn't turn off fast enough (although honestly, some of the movies that are so-called kids movies, like "Snow White," seem pretty jaded to me). Today is better because he can have his popcorn and his movie too. Oh and thanks to C-SPAN, he doesn't have to deal with being homophobic.