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SCIENCE MATTERS by David Suzuki
This year marks my 25th as host of The Nature of Things. Recently, an interviewer asked how television programs have changed over a quarter of a century. Reflecting on the answer, I think that the changes in programs mirror changes in society.
The Nature of Things began as a series in 1960 and is the longest-running series on CBC today. From Anik 1, our first communications satellite, to the birth control pill, test-tube babies, computers, genetic engineering, pollution and climate change, the series has brought important issues to a large and loyal Canadian audience. You could say the program has been an electronic bridge, connecting the country and keeping us abreast of the consequences of science when applied by industry, medicine and the military. In contrast, the United States has never had a science program in prime time on any of the major networks!
Since I began my television career, there has been an explosive growth in the number of competing channels, to say nothing of computers and the internet. And once remote controls came along, viewers became mighty skittish, flicking from channel to channel like hummingbirds.
In such a world, how do we attract and keep an audience? The same way everyone else does - by shouting, by being sensational, sexier, more violent and more superficial. When I began as host of The Nature of Things, we attracted between 18 and 25 percent of the audience at that time and when a rating of less than a million and half viewers came in, we were very worried. We haven’t had a million people in over 10 years. In fact, the last time we had a blockbuster audience was for a program titled Phallacies, all about the penis.
In the neurosciences, there is a fascinating phenomenon called “habituation.” When a neuron is isolated with an electrode inserted to measure electrical impulses, it can be stimulated and shown to be excited with an electrical discharge. When the stimulus is repeated, the response is smaller and slower. But repeated stimulation results in no response, the neuron is habituated and has to be left alone for a while to recover its sensitivity to the stimulus. Psychologically, there is an analogous observation. When a buzzer goes off, we may be startled and find it too loud to think. But if the buzzer continues, over time, we find the noise recedes and we don’t even notice it any more.
We can extend the analogy of neuronal habituation in our viewing habits. In the cacophony of programs all clamoring for attention, our demand for novelty increases so we want more jolts per minute or we think “it’s boring,” “it drags” or “it’s too slow.” And this habituation occurs even more rapidly among journalists. When I try to get media attention to climate change, I’m often told, “that’s an old story,” “what’s the new angle?” or “we’ve covered that to death.”
We can see it in our attention to terrorism. When a hostage is taken and murdered, we are shocked and outraged. But subsequent killings of hostages fail to elicit the same level of response; we’ve heard about it already. So in trying to get media attention, terrorists turn to multiple hostages, suicide bombings, taking over planes and using them as weapons, beheadings on camera, and capturing and murdering hundreds of children. Where will it end? The escalation in horror becomes a new threshold that the next one will have to top. And so it goes with environmental issues. Is it any wonder that environmentalists are sometimes dismissed as fear mongers in a world where dangers and risks must continually escalate or else be dismissed as yesterday’s story? Surely we need a better way for society to engage in such important issues. Otherwise, in this game of one-upmanship, the public will always lose.
Take the Nature Challenge and learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org
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