Fractured Time

   Why in the world would people stage a parade — the Tournament of Roses, for instance — at eight in the morning — on New Year’s Day when band musicians, float riders and spectators should all still be in bed?
   And what sort of people — movie people on their way to the Academy Awards, for instance — enjoy putting on evening clothes at three in the afternoon?
   Early morning parades, people going about in evening clothes in the afternoon and numerous other unnatural acts at unholy hours occur regularly in Los Angeles so that they can be aired on television at reasonable hours on the East Coast.
   The Tournament of Roses airs at 8 a.m. here and at the far more genial hour of 11 a.m. in the east. The annual Academy Awards ceremony begins at 6 p.m. here, so it can air live at 9 p.m. on the East Coast.
   How come?
   Because television has broken the clock to suit its advertisers who pay astronomical sums of money to peddle their wares in so-called prime time.
   In this way, money fractures time in America daily and makes fools of all of us.
   The 2000 Olympics in Australia were not only unexciting, but baffling, as everything was taped, edited, shelved, shuffled and then doled out in discrete segments in the evenings by NBC.
   During the 2002 Winter Olympics next month in Salt Lake City, right here in America, most, if not all, of the events will again be shown on tape delay – under orders from greedy affiliates eager to rake in those prime time mega-bucks.
   Television’s great signal asset is that it can bring us events as they happen, and yet it seldom does, because advertisers prefer prime time audiences and the networks can sell prime time audiences for more money and so major live events – like the Olympics – are taped, edited and packaged for airing in the evening.
   Just as television fractures time, it fractures events, — deconstructing the Olympics, breaking up football games and tennis matches with ads, interrupting breaking news with commercials and splintering movies by inserting bundles of ads at regular intervals.
   Television was meant to complement life, in the way that everything from books and lightbulbs to movies and computers has, but it filled needs people didn’t even know they had. It served as an instant common ground, giving people something to talk about. And it was pervasive – being everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. And, perhaps most significantly, that room in the room, glowing warmly, filled the void in American households, relieving the pressure on their inhabitants to actually talk and listen to each other. And it required no effort beyond pushing a button.
   Mainly, however, it was a miraculous moneymaking machine – churning out extraordinary quantities of money. A successful sitcom could turn its creators into multi-millionaires as it spun endlessly from network to independent stations and on to cable networks.
   And so television was soon elevated from accessory to the main thing, and life became the accessory. We do not use television, it uses us.
   Beginning in 1920s, the Tournament of Roses and the Rose Bowl football game – in which the top Pacific Coast Conference (which later became the Pac-10 Conference) and Big Ten teams played – were held on New Year’s Day in Pasadena. That glorious day became a glorious American celebration. But this New Year’s Day, to accommodate their television masters, the men who run collegiate football shattered the celebration and ended the tradition by rerigging the schedule, creating a new moveable “national championship” and moving the Rose Bowl to January 3 – a Thursday, two days after the Tournament of Roses. Pasadena residents didn’t like it. Fans didn’t like it. Pacific Conference teams didn’t like it. But TV moguls liked it, and they always have their way.
   Of course, television isn’t a news or entertainment medium, it’s an advertising medium, and, it sells ads by selling audiences to advertisers, and it manipulates audiences by playing games with time.
   It would be hopelessly naïve to believe that the moguls will ever see the medium as more than a money machine -– especially as a handful of mega-corporations now control it.
   But since the U.S. 2000 Census showed a major population shift to the Southwest, perhaps the moguls will finally be forced to recognize the West Coast clock. Let the 2002 Thanksgiving Day Macy’s Parade march in place until 2 p.m. in New York, so that we can see it live at 11 a.m. and the 2002 Tournament of Roses kick off here at 11 a.m. our time. And let the Oscars begin here at 9 p.m. live. New Yorkers enjoy boasting that they never sleep, so they will surely enjoy seeing Oscar at midnight. And let the Tony Awards begin at 9 p.m. in New York so we can see them live at 6 p.m. And, last but hardly least, all those great classic movies that now air here at the perpetually rushed hour of 5 p.m. will henceforth air here at the utterly cool hour of 8 p.m.
   Inevitably, money will continue to beat the clock, and time will still be fractured, but at least it’ll be fractured in our favor. And Hollywood can finally put on its evening clothes in the actual evening.