The victim of old tv channel

Â B&W Television, originally uploaded by forester401.

*The photo I picked up via seach in flickr with keywords “old tv.”

I grew up in Kumamoto city, the southern part of Japan in my childhood, where they had only two tv channels (channel 11 for RKK, channel 6 for TKU) except for two NHK channels (which make four channels in total). Even folks in Tokyo had only four or five tv channels back then and, still even today, we have only channels 4,6,8,10, and 12 national tv networks here in Tokyo.

Over time, our minds (mine for one, obviously)Â haveÂ been tamed and we tend toÂ thinkÂ the tv channels must be about theÂ selection fromÂ a few.Â Even more so for my parents’ generation.Â But the notion would sound totally irrelevant to the generations of my daughterÂ who have never used the old tv set but instead are getting accustomed to keyboard and touch panel.

I think it is the matter of timing untilÂ the younger generations willÂ start wondering why there are only 12 buttons available in todays’ tv controller.

The tv section of print newspaper is already full and to me it seems they are ready to boast.Â

0 responses to “The victim of old tv channel”

Pete Zaitcev

October 29, 2006

I don’t understand what your point was. You related a story from your past, then observed on the generation gap. This is fine, but I just don’t understand the moral here. Was it to lament the passing of something good? To rejoice with the new? Or opposite? To regret that the youth will never know the limits of a rotary channel switch?

BTW, in America at least, TV has entered the death spiral, with viewership flat despite the population growth. It’s being eroded by the web. That’s the real story which makes the developments inside the TV sphere trivial.

Kenji Mori

October 29, 2006

Pete,

Thanks for the comment. I should have written it more carefully.

Hope this clarifies.

Pete,

The moment we know it is “TV”, we tend to think it has only a few channel choices. (especially older generations who grew up with a rotary channel switch in their childhood). I suppose it was natural back then the rotary channel switch was “physically” constrained to have up to 12 channels, like a clock. In the States, the national TV broadcaster are four today, right? In Japan, we have five channels except NHK. Hence the print newspaper can accomodate all the programs in one page, still.

I suppose at some point in time such “physical” constraints had gone away with touch panels, keyboards, e.t.c. so technically you should be able to choose one from a wider choice selection (i.e. cable TV.)

But the fact of the matter is that relatively older generations still tend to think the choice set (TV channels) to be around five (channels) when watching TV, while in fact the constraints don’t exist much now (you can search YouTube to get the video you want). The point is that nowadays constraints in fact only reside in our minds and perceptions about how we can choose the one from the menu. It should not be a few.

I can imagine both viewership and readership decline.

BTW, sports section of the print newspaper still has the same space as they had in 10 years ago. What are the changes we witnesed over the ten years in sports in Japan: J league succer started, Hide Nakata debut in Italy, Nomo moved to MLB, and on and on. But the space of the sport sectioin is the same. As the result, we have fewer baseball teams now than before.

Pete Zaitcev

October 30, 2006

I see… BTW, I was born in Russia, remember. My father assembled our first TV from parts in 1975. When he turned it on, they were showing the Party Congress. There was only one channel.

Kenji Mori

October 30, 2006

Pete,

Oh, I got two channels back then. So I won:)

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April 20, 2016

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