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A closer observer of the small screen once called it a "vast wasteland of violence, sadism and murder, private eyes, gangsters and more violence-and cartoons." That is how Newton Minow, a US television regulator, described it in 1961.
Since then television language has become more colourful, violence more explicit and sex more prevalent. Lady Chatterley's Lover has moved from the banned book shelf to a classic BBC serial.
Concern over such changing standards has shaped our view of television and masked its broader influence in developing countries.
To illustrate its effects, Kenny cites the case of Brazil. When television there began to show a steady diet of local soaps in the 1970s, Brazilian women typically had five or more children and were trapped in poverty. As the popularity of the soaps grew, birth rates fell.
According to researchers, 72% of the leading female characters in the main soaps had no children and only 7% had more than one. One study calculated that such soaps had the same effect on fertility rates as keeping girls in school for five years more than normal. It is not just birth rates that are affected. Kenny notes: "Kids who watch TV out of school, according to a World Bank survey of young people in the shanty towns of Fortaleza in Brazil, are considerably less likely to consume drugs."
Television appears to have more power to reduce youth drug use than the strictures of an educated mother and Brazilian soaps presenting educated urban women running their own businesses are thought to be compelling role models.
Television can also improve health, In Ghana a soap opera line that warned mothers they were feeding their children "more than just rice" if they did not wash their hands after defecating was followed by a seemingly permanent improvement in personal hygiene.
Why do such changes happen? Simple, says Kenny: soap operas, whether local versions of Ugly Betty or vintage imports of Baywatch, open up new horizons. "Some hours could he better spout planting trees, helping old ladies across the road or playing cricket," he said. "But watching TV exposes people to new ideas and different people. With that will come greater opportunity, growing equality and a better understanding of the world. Not bad./