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Contemplation Time

 five minutes of blankness after every program
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The trouble with television (well, one of many) is that it moves so swiftly from one thing to the next. You get a hard-hitting documentary on world poverty followed by an hour of closeups of celebrity anal warts, bang bang bang without a pause, unless you count the ads (I don't, because I actually enjoy them).

To enhance our appreciation, television should simply schedule five minutes of blank screen and silence after every program, to give the viewer time to think / converse about the issues raised by the program.

—bumhat, Jan 21 2005

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       Is your "Off" button broken?
—DrCurry, Jan 21 2005
   

       no, but if I switched off I'd miss the celebrity anal warts...
—bumhat, Jan 21 2005
   

       In the future, television shows will be thirty seconds long, to cater f- oh, look, a shiny thing!
—Detly, Jan 21 2005
   

       A rough estimate of five minutes of silence after hour long programs over the course of a year and on just one channel is someones wasted 4383300.00 minutes of fame.   

       I need a couple of minutes to contemplate this one.<swoon>
—skinflaps, Jan 21 2005
   

       Most people I know do the opposite of this - - think about things like world poverty et cetera, bang bang bang, without pause. When they want to shut their brains off from contemplation, they flick the TV on for five minutes or so - - until they feel 20 IQ points less intelligent. [-]   

       "Phew. That episode of 'Fear Factor' really brought up some issues. I need about five minutes to contemplate. The issues in question are my lunch, and when I say contemplate, I mean 'clean the carpet.'"
—contracts, Jan 21 2005
   

       if nothing else, the five minutes would be good to make a sandwich or go to the bathroom.
—schematics, Jan 22 2005
   

       *Note: Is taking idea seriously*   

       So basically this idea is to get the TV industry to do for you what you could do yourself by using the off button?! Its that "Its wrong because they aren't doing it for me" attitude which is causing a helpless society. If everyone took five minutes of quiet meditation after a serious program the networks would realize that air time is unwatched and would change their programming from celebrity anal warts to music with nice imagery. Or they might just cut serious programming so that no one takes five minutes to reflect after each show.
—MrDaliLlama, Jan 22 2005
   

       I thought commercials work to this effect. But obviously they don't do it for you.
—Susan, Jan 22 2005
   

       I smoked for 20 years for the same reason. I think there should be 5 minutes of staring at the wall meditation regulated by law every hour for everyone everywhere. I'm just sorry I didn't figure out that I didn't have to smoke to do it for 20 years.
—JesusHChrist, Jan 22 2005
   

       Also I think this is the upside of having a slow computer. Although I still get antsy waiting for webpages to download, it really has made me more patient and able to meditate at very short notice.
—JesusHChrist, Jan 22 2005
   

       I don't mind it being brought up myself, considering that the five minutes are inevitably going to be used as some sort of advertising space.   

       Just make a quiet/silent five-minute commercial break at the very end of each show. It sounds like an intelligent idea to work around if you ask me.   

       It's not like you won't find the break to be useful for -something-. Somehow it does feel more natural for a T.V. station to behave this way instead of cramming one show right after the next, divided by only a short, noisy commercial break.
—Albino Fox, Jan 25 2005
   

       I was an early adopter of HDTV, and 3 years ago was provided a set at home to evaluate.   

       One of the benefits aside from the great picture and excellent sound, was that the local stations hadn't figured out how to encode their material, so only the network feeds (shows) were broadcast.   

       Thereby providing the requested 5 minutes of silence to meditate on the FOX (or whichever) logo. Marvellous!
—csea, Jan 25 2005
   

       Yeah 5 mins or something every hour across all stations like the EBS tests.
—miggavin, Nov 09 2009
   


 

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