Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Enough Already--TV motion

Is it just me, or is anyone else bothered by all of the extra motion on the TV screen these days? Sometimes it's a little and sometimes it's a lot, but it all drives me crazy. The least amount of distraction usually occurs on dramas or comedies. On them there is the motion of the show, a logo for the station, and pop up ads advertising another show. Some of those ads show action, so you have a show within a show even without having a TV with that feature. On talk shows, in addition to what you see on the dramas, there is often a screen behind the talking heads with an abstract pattern that moves in a repetitive motion.

However, the worst are the news shows. First you have the anchors—sometimes two or three of them with split screens and the annoying time delay that happens as they try to talk to each other. Also there is a crawler along the bottom with headlines and sometimes another one with stock prices. In addition there is usually a logo in the corner that slowly spins around with a date and a time under that that also spins. And to top it all off, sometimes there are those abstract patterns behind the anchors heads with repetitive motion.

Aggghhh! Enough already. Our brains are not made to process that much differing information at one time. At least mine isn't. And as hard as I try, I can't tune most of it out. What's the solution? Well, the obvious one would be for me to stop watching TV, but that's not going to happen anytime soon. As much as I complain about it (don't get me started on the number of commercials), TV is still a comfort to me. I remember a time when my family bonded over watching a TV show together and TV can still evoke those good feelings in me. In the meantime, I guess I can keep complaining. : )

Do any of you TV watchers, get annoyed by all of the motion on the screen these days?