TV Will Save the World
By Charles Kenny
'Forget Twitter and Facebook, Google and the Kindle. Forget the latest sleek iGadget. Television is still the most influential medium around. Indeed, for many of the poorest regions of the world, it remains the next big thing — poised, finally, to attain truly global ubiquity. And that is a good thing, because the TV revolution is changing lives for the better.
Across the developing world, around 45% of households had a TV in 1995; by 2005 the number had climbed above 60%. That’s some way behind the U.S., where there are more TVs than people, but it dwarfs worldwide Internet access. Five million more households in sub-Saharan Africa will get a TV over the next five years. In 2005, after the fall of the Taliban, which had outlawed TV, 1 in 5 Afghans had one. The global total is another 150 million by 2013 — pushing the numbers to well beyond two-thirds of households.
Television’s most transformative impact will be on the lives of women. In India, researchers Robert Jensen and Emily Oster found that when cable TV reached villages, women were more likely to go to the market without their husbands’ permission and less likely to want a boy rather than a girl. They were more likely to make decisions over child health care and less likely to think that men had the right to beat their wives. TV is also a powerful medium for adult education. In the Indian state of Gujarat, Chitrageet is a hugely popular show that plays Bollywood song and dance clips. The routines are subtitled in Gujarati. Within six months, viewers had made a small but significant improvement in their reading skills.
Too much TV has been associated with violence, obesity and social isolation. But TV is having a positive impact on the lives of billions worldwide, and as the spread of mobile TV, video cameras and YouTube democratize both access and content, it will become an even greater force for humbling tyrannical governments and tyrannical husbands alike.(Wednesday, Mar. 11, 2010 http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/ 0,28804,1971133_1971110_1971118,00.html)
“TV will save the world” - in the passive voice:
Deficits can pave the wave to popularity in politics, at least in the short run, and they tempt even the most conservative parties to spend big.
The reason politicians avoid austerity became clear Friday in Greece. Skai TV reported that public opinion was shifting against the budgetary reforms of George Papandreou, the country’s socialist prime minister, who came to power last autumn.
Nine out of 10 civil servants in Greece are against reducing their “extra” months’ salary, as were a vast majority of private-sector workers. Benefit cuts, and increases in the sales and fuel tax, also provoked widespread opposition, according to the Skai poll.
Clashes broke out in central Athens on Friday during a protest outside Parliament as lawmakers prepared to vote on austerity measures to deal with Greece’s debt crisis, The Associated Press reported.
Mr. Papandreou defeated his opponent, the center-right politician Kostas Karamanlis who had also tried cuts, with promises of a stimulus package. Now Mr. Papandreou finds himself forced to ask Greece, and Greeks, to spend less, rather than more.
In an interview published Friday by the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Mr. Papandreou said, “We do not want to be the Lehman Brothers of the E.U.”(The New York Times, March 5, 2010)
According to the text:
Deficits can pave the wave to popularity in politics, at least in the short run, and they tempt even the most conservative parties to spend big.
The reason politicians avoid austerity became clear Friday in Greece. Skai TV reported that public opinion was shifting against the budgetary reforms of George Papandreou, the country’s socialist prime minister, who came to power last autumn.
Nine out of 10 civil servants in Greece are against reducing their “extra” months’ salary, as were a vast majority of private-sector workers. Benefit cuts, and increases in the sales and fuel tax, also provoked widespread opposition, according to the Skai poll.
Clashes broke out in central Athens on Friday during a protest outside Parliament as lawmakers prepared to vote on austerity measures to deal with Greece’s debt crisis, The Associated Press reported.
Mr. Papandreou defeated his opponent, the center-right politician Kostas Karamanlis who had also tried cuts, with promises of a stimulus package. Now Mr. Papandreou finds himself forced to ask Greece, and Greeks, to spend less, rather than more.
In an interview published Friday by the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Mr. Papandreou said, “We do not want to be the Lehman Brothers of the E.U.”(The New York Times, March 5, 2010)
Mark the correct alternative, according to the text:
Deficits can pave the wave to popularity in politics, at least in the short run, and they tempt even the most conservative parties to spend big.
The reason politicians avoid austerity became clear Friday in Greece. Skai TV reported that public opinion was shifting against the budgetary reforms of George Papandreou, the country’s socialist prime minister, who came to power last autumn.
Nine out of 10 civil servants in Greece are against reducing their “extra” months’ salary, as were a vast majority of private-sector workers. Benefit cuts, and increases in the sales and fuel tax, also provoked widespread opposition, according to the Skai poll.
Clashes broke out in central Athens on Friday during a protest outside Parliament as lawmakers prepared to vote on austerity measures to deal with Greece’s debt crisis, The Associated Press reported.
Mr. Papandreou defeated his opponent, the center-right politician Kostas Karamanlis who had also tried cuts, with promises of a stimulus package. Now Mr. Papandreou finds himself forced to ask Greece, and Greeks, to spend less, rather than more.
In an interview published Friday by the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Mr. Papandreou said, “We do not want to be the Lehman Brothers of the E.U.”(The New York Times, March 5, 2010)
According to the text, George Papandreou:
TV Will Save the World
By Charles Kenny
'Forget Twitter and Facebook, Google and the Kindle. Forget the latest sleek iGadget. Television is still the most influential medium around. Indeed, for many of the poorest regions of the world, it remains the next big thing — poised, finally, to attain truly global ubiquity. And that is a good thing, because the TV revolution is changing lives for the better.
Across the developing world, around 45% of households had a TV in 1995; by 2005 the number had climbed above 60%. That’s some way behind the U.S., where there are more TVs than people, but it dwarfs worldwide Internet access. Five million more households in sub-Saharan Africa will get a TV over the next five years. In 2005, after the fall of the Taliban, which had outlawed TV, 1 in 5 Afghans had one. The global total is another 150 million by 2013 — pushing the numbers to well beyond two-thirds of households.
Television’s most transformative impact will be on the lives of women. In India, researchers Robert Jensen and Emily Oster found that when cable TV reached villages, women were more likely to go to the market without their husbands’ permission and less likely to want a boy rather than a girl. They were more likely to make decisions over child health care and less likely to think that men had the right to beat their wives. TV is also a powerful medium for adult education. In the Indian state of Gujarat, Chitrageet is a hugely popular show that plays Bollywood song and dance clips. The routines are subtitled in Gujarati. Within six months, viewers had made a small but significant improvement in their reading skills.
Too much TV has been associated with violence, obesity and social isolation. But TV is having a positive impact on the lives of billions worldwide, and as the spread of mobile TV, video cameras and YouTube democratize both access and content, it will become an even greater force for humbling tyrannical governments and tyrannical husbands alike.
(Wednesday, Mar. 11, 2010 http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/ 0,28804,1971133_1971110_1971118,00.html)
We can say that the author of the passage is:
TV Will Save the World
By Charles Kenny
'Forget Twitter and Facebook, Google and the Kindle. Forget the latest sleek iGadget. Television is still the most influential medium around. Indeed, for many of the poorest regions of the world, it remains the next big thing — poised, finally, to attain truly global ubiquity. And that is a good thing, because the TV revolution is changing lives for the better.
Across the developing world, around 45% of households had a TV in 1995; by 2005 the number had climbed above 60%. That’s some way behind the U.S., where there are more TVs than people, but it dwarfs worldwide Internet access. Five million more households in sub-Saharan Africa will get a TV over the next five years. In 2005, after the fall of the Taliban, which had outlawed TV, 1 in 5 Afghans had one. The global total is another 150 million by 2013 — pushing the numbers to well beyond two-thirds of households.
Television’s most transformative impact will be on the lives of women. In India, researchers Robert Jensen and Emily Oster found that when cable TV reached villages, women were more likely to go to the market without their husbands’ permission and less likely to want a boy rather than a girl. They were more likely to make decisions over child health care and less likely to think that men had the right to beat their wives. TV is also a powerful medium for adult education. In the Indian state of Gujarat, Chitrageet is a hugely popular show that plays Bollywood song and dance clips. The routines are subtitled in Gujarati. Within six months, viewers had made a small but significant improvement in their reading skills.
Too much TV has been associated with violence, obesity and social isolation. But TV is having a positive impact on the lives of billions worldwide, and as the spread of mobile TV, video cameras and YouTube democratize both access and content, it will become an even greater force for humbling tyrannical governments and tyrannical husbands alike.
(Wednesday, Mar. 11, 2010 http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/ 0,28804,1971133_1971110_1971118,00.html)
The word “household” in the text most likely refers to: