after these incredible speeches and ideas that are being spread i am in the awkward position of being here to talk to you today about
television so most everyone watches tv we like it we like some parts of it here in america people actually love tv the average american watches tv for almost
five hours a day
but a lot of people don 't love it so much they in fact berate it they call it stupid and worse believe me my mother growing up she called it the idiot box
but my idea today is not to debate whether there 's such a thing as good tv or bad tv my idea today is to tell you that i believe television has a conscience
so why i believe that television has a conscience is that i actually believe that television directly reflects the moral
disseminate our entire value system so all these things are uniquely human and they all add up to our idea of conscience now today we 're not talking about good and bad tv we 're talking about popular tv we 're talking about top ten nielsen rated shows over the course of fifty years
how do these nielsen ratings reflect not just what you 've heard about which is the idea of our social collectiveunconscious but how do these top ten nielsen rated shows over fifty years reflect the idea of our social conscience
how does television evolve over time and what does this say about our society now speaking of evolution from basic biology you probably remember that the animal kingdom including humans have four basic primal instincts you have hunger you have sex
you have power and you have the urge for acquisitiveness
as humans what 's important to remember is that we 've developed we 've evolved over time to temper or tame these basic animal instincts we have the capacity to laugh and cry we feel awe we feel pity that is separate and apart from the animal kingdom
the other thing about human beings is that we love to be entertained we love to watch tv this is something that clearly separates us from the animal kingdom animals might love to play but they don 't love to watch
so i had an ambition to discover what could be understood from this uniquely human relationship between television programs and the human conscious why has television entertainment evolved the way it has i kind of think of it as this cartoon devil or angel sitting on our shoulders
is television literally functioning as our consciencetempting us and rewarding us at the same time
so to begin to answer these questions we did a research study we went back fifty years to the one thousand nine hundred and fifty nine one thousand nine hundred and sixty television season we surveyed the top twenty nielsen shows every year for fifty years a thousand shows
we talked to over three thousand individuals almost three thousand six hundred aged eighteen to seventy and we asked them how they felt
emotionally how did you feel watching every single one of these shows did you feel a sense of moral ambiguity did you feel outrage did you laugh what did this mean for you
so to our global ted audiences i want to say that this was a u s sample
but as you can see these emotional need states are truly universal and on a factual basis over eighty percent of the u s s most popular shows are exported around the world so i really hope our global audiences can relate
for inspiring me to even think about the idea of conscience and the tricks that conscience can play on us on a daily basis i thank legendary rabbi jack stern
and for the way in which i 'm going to present the data i want to thank ted community superstar hans rosling who you may have just seen
okay here we go so here you see from one thousand nine hundred and sixty to two thousand and ten the fifty years of our study
two things we 're going to start with the inspiration state and the moral ambiguity state which for this purpose we defined inspiration as television shows that uplift me that make me feel much more positive about the world
as we start you see in one thousand nine hundred and sixty inspiration is holding steady that 's what we 're watching tv for moral ambiguity starts to climb
right at the end of the sixty s moral ambiguity is going up inspiration is kind of on the wane why the cuban missile crisis jfk is shot the civil rights movement race riots the vietnam war mlk is shot bobby kennedy is shot watergate look what
happens in one thousand nine hundred and seventy inspiration plummets moral ambiguity takes off they cross
but ronald reagan a telegenic president is in office it 's trying to recover but look it can 't aids iran contra the challenger disaster chernobyl moral ambiguity becomes the dominant meme in television from one thousand nine hundred and ninety for the next twenty years
take a look at this this chart is going to document a very similar trend but in this case we have comfort the bubble in red
now this time on tv you have bonanza don 't forget you have gunsmoke you have andy griffith you have domestic shows all about comfort
but you literally have two establishment shows gunsmoke and gomer pyle in one thousand nine hundred and sixty nine are the number two and number three rated television shows what 's number one the socially irreverent hippie show rowan and martin 's laugh in they 're all living together right
this was the first show that allowed viewers to say my god
i can comment on how i feel about the vietnam war about the presidency through television that 's what we mean by a breakout show
seven of ten
shows ranked most highly for irreverence appeared on air during the vietnam war
five of the top ten during the nixon administration only one generation twenty years in and we discovered wow tv can do that
the digital folks did not invent disruptive archie bunker was shoved out of his easy chair along with the rest of us forty years ago
this is a quick chart here 's another attributefantasy and imagination which are shows defined as takes me out of my everyday realm and makes me feel better that 's mapped against the red dot unemployment which is a simple bureau of labor department statistic you 'll see that every time
so here you are in my favorite chart because this is our last twenty years whether or not you 're in my business you have surely heard or read of the decline of the thing called the three camera sitcom and the rise
of reality tv
once and for all why not
we had a two thousand presidentialelectiondecided by the supreme court we had the bursting of the tech bubble we had nine eleven anthrax becomes part of the social lexicon look what happens when we keep going at the turn of the century the internet takes off reality television has taken hold
what do people want in their tv then
i would have thought revenge or nostalgia give me some comfort my world is falling apart no they want judgment i can vote you off the island i can keep sarah palin 's daughter dancing i can choose the next
murphy brown took on a vice president when she took on the idea of single parenthood this era 's mom
bree van de kamp
let me also thank the incredible creators who get up everyday to put their ideas on our television screens throughout all these ages of television
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