Back in the mid 80’s when I was stationed in Turkey, yes the country, we didn’t have satellite TV as they do now. We had ONE station, AFRT’s (Air Force Radio & Television).  Programming was “limited” to locally produced news and pre-recorded television shows, usually one season behind.  The alternative was to watch over-the-air programming from Turkish television.  On rare occasion I would find a movie subtitled in Turkish so I could actually watch in English.  There was always an annoying graphic in the lower right corner with the TV station icon. And of course open captioning (subtitle) is also distracting.

Fast forward to 2008.  For a few years now especially during prime-time, you may have noticed the NBC, ABC or CBS network icons in one of the lower corners of your screen, or for those with HDTV, the lower left or right 3^rd of your screen.  In the past year I’ve noticed a huge increase in “pop-up” style graphics during a show usually in the lower 3^rd of my screen. This is mostly found on the cable channels like A&E, History, Discovery, TLC, TBS and the likes.  I’m not sure I understand the concept here.  They are almost always commercials for the same network for other shows.

Maybe the networks are addressing the culture of our newest generation of multitaskers.  Kids today can come home from school and work on their homework, watch TV, carry on a phone conversation and even text message – all at the same time!  Something has to suffer – I don’t believe our brain can fully “participate” in more than one maybe two tasks at a time.  And I don’t buy a kid being able to recite all the tasks they are doing as a sign-off they are truly managing them.  It’s like the task manager in Windows™, at some point the memory stack freezes and then what – system restart.  Sorry, a little geek showing through there.

My tolerance level dwindles when one of two things happen, the new graphics become over animated and start running across the screen or the graphics in general interfere with the content of the show.  I feel there is no better protest than moving to another channel.  That way I can reduce the viewership of that program.  Oh yeah, another conspiracy theory – the cable company doesn’t actually capture your viewing habits – right!

Send me your comments.  I’m curious to see how many have noticed this.