Rehabbing the TV Dragon

Our homemade home arising from the pieces of several previous buildings.

Those of you who know me well, know that we haven’t owned a TV since our children left home 30 years ago. Most of the shows then seemed sorta worthless, and the nature shows were weak and sometimes phony. Mr. Nature’s crew would scan the “wilderness” with the camera and he would intone that today we are looking for the exceedingly rare yadi-yadi bird in remotest Africa and it has only been photographed twice and… Oh! There’s one now!!! Meanwhile I’m looking at the landscape images and the vegetation and recognize that this is the Mohave Desert, a three-hour drive from Hollywood, and the sand dunes are crisscrossed with tire tracks and there is a Budweiser can in the bushes.

My biggest fish, so far.

Perhaps you’ve already heard my little rant that a regular diet of TV is fine for prisoners and the frail, but more or less healthy people should be actually doing something, especially outdoors. In 2008 I was deer hunting on crutches and grateful for the opportunity, but recognize that today I am beginning to join the frail.

In our young rare butterfly plantation.

Yes, I have no doubt missed out on some fine nature shows in recent years, but I am a participant, not a spectator, and I would rather build my own energy efficient recycled home, and catch a really big fish, and create a rare butterfly plantation, and …

The purpose of today’s lengthy introduction is to mention that The Nature Conservancy has recently acknowledged that TV and streaming has a firm grip on people’s time and attention around the world. So they have started partnering into the made-for-TV business by media professionals, not featuring rare and unusual animals in faraway places, but instead broader conservation and management issues, which might also be in your backyard.

According to the spring 2020 issue of their magazine/journal, their first large-scale production, to be released soon, is a three-part series titled “The Molecule That Made Us.” It will be a tour to selected spots around the world that are dealing with the dynamic intersection between water, nature, and cultures. And it will be a mixed bag of lessons, ranging for example from native peoples who live comfortably within the framework of little-modified nature; to how the Aswan Dams have completely changed Egypt; to New York City proactively protecting their watershed in the Catskills and supplying almost untreated water to 8 million people. The TNC goal is not just entertainment, but also inspiration for viewers to make changes.

The UK is leading the way with this type of programming. Sir David Attenborough is a long-term veteran of quality nature shows for the UK. In 2017 he released the documentary series Blue Planet II, which was not just beautiful underwater scenes, but the ugly world of plastic trash in the oceans. Subsequently, shoreline trash around the UK has declined 16% in 2018, and an additional 7% in 2019. When broadcast In China, it attracted 80 million viewers, who slowed down the internet as they all streamed it.

So when “The Molecule That Made Us” is released, try to catch it. And try to place it in the context of our wider world, for example national elections next November.

If the TV dragon is going to bite hours out of our days, let’s make it worthwhile.