Mr. Bob Brody has hit this Awful Nail on its Awful Head. TVs in Restaurants is part of the Decline and Fall of the Good Ole USofA. Yes, we have lots of other problems but these pervasive TVs are dumping more Slippery on our Slippery Slope every day.
Mr. Brody addresses the problem masterfully but Fella has to disagree with one aspect of the picture he paints. He says that the sound of the TVs are Blaring at us as we eat. In my experience, they do not blare sound at us but they still blare at us because they are a constant visual distraction to us.
Even if we are determined to not pay attention to them, we find that our eyes are continually catching sight of something or other that interrupts our conversation, our concentration, our chewing or our interaction with those we came into the restaurant with in order to get away from It All. Sadly we find that It All followed us into our favorite restaurant.
I just pecked out “favorite restaurant”. My favorite restaurant is no longer my favorite. Years ago it had No TVs. One time I asked to see that owner and congratulated him on the fact that he did not have a TV in his establishment. His response to me was he would never have a TV in his restaurant. Today he has 2 TVs for his diners to “enjoy”.
Below I have inserted Mr. Brody’s article on TV Dinners and followed that with part of a Blog Posting I published about this awfulness on July 5, 2018.
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First, Mr. Brody’s Article...
· Opinion
If I Wanted a TV Dinner, I’d Stay Home
Restaurants should ditch the screens and allow conversation to flourish.
By
Bob Brody
Sept. 20, 2018 6:06 p.m. ET
Live television at Shaw's Tavern in Washington, June 8, 2017. Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press
As soon as I set foot in the restaurant, I hear it. The sound is unmistakable. It’s a television.
Let me state for the record how I feel about TVs in restaurants. I hate them. TVs in restaurants are a scourge and an epidemic.
Restaurants were conceived as places you go to eat. Someone would buy, prepare and serve food to you. This business model has held up well since the first modern restaurant opened, reportedly in Paris in 1765.
But in the late 1940s, a few taverns started putting in TVs to draw fans for boxing matches. Then traditional restaurants installed sets. Nowadays, television has infiltrated not only diners, coffee shops and pizzerias but also upscale steakhouses, romantic Italian bistros and chic cafes.
I hold to three basic principles about eating out. First, focus on the food. Devote your senses to admiring its appearance, savoring its composition, inhaling its aromas.
Second, you typically gather to eat with other people—family, friends, colleagues, clients. Restaurants serve a social purpose. You might chance upon a long-lost classmate at the next table or see a marriage proposal.
Third, restaurants give you the opportunity to carry out the popular activity known as having a conversation. A laugh might ensue, or a heart-to-heart moment. You can get to know, and perhaps even better understand and appreciate, your parents, your children and others. Such exchanges lubricate the wheels of our culture, our economy and our society.
These objectives are hard to accomplish with a blaring TV in the background. Discussing career issues with a friend can be a challenge when you can’t help overhearing some sportscaster go berserk over a dunk.
The National Restaurant Association has not collected statistics on how many restaurants house televisions. Nor has it performed any research on customer attitudes toward TVs in restaurants or expressed a public point of view about the issue.
I hereby implore the restaurant industry to give us a break. (Sports bars are exempt.) Let’s face it, our attempts to interact with each other face-to-face these days already encounter enough distractions. We spend ever more hours of our lives staring at our screens. TVs follow us wherever we go, from airports to our doctor’s waiting room. Let’s preserve the places that are left where we can hang out together uninterrupted.
I’ve adopted my own personal policy. If a restaurant has a TV going, I ask a manager to either turn it off or lower the volume. If my request is honored, as it often is, we’re all set to enjoy a proper meal. But if it’s declined, I have the advantage of consumer choice. I can vote with my feet and leave.
Mr. Brody, an executive and essayist in New York City, is author of the memoir “Playing Catch with Strangers: A Family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes of Age.”
Appeared in the September 21, 2018, print edition.
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Now please reread this part of my Foolishness...Or Is It about TVs In Restaurants...
Ø Little did he know that the restaurants of the Good Ole USofA were going to be populated with somewhere between 2 (Chinese Take Outs) and 53 (Sports Bars) TVs in each dining place.
Ø Some of these restaurants used to actually be places of relaxation (Sports Bars never were relaxing).
Ø Hardly anyone pays any attention to what is playing on the TVs (Sports Bars excluded), but everyone is continually distracted by what’s going on on these TVs.
Ø No one can hear what the TVs are saying to us but every one of us periodically loses track of the table conversation because we find ourselves staring at the silent TV thinking, “I wonder what he just said?”
Ø The TVs do an excellent job of destroying what little Person to Person Interaction remains after the Smartphone has had its way with us.
Ø An example of the few people who are not distracted by the TVs during the meal are those that are telling their fellow diners that, since no one pays any attention to them, they are going to commit suicide when they go home tonight because they feel so utterly ignored.
Ø The people who are told about the impending suicide do not get alarmed because they are distracted by the TV they are not watching and, therefore, are not listening to the future suicidee (yea, I know that’s not a word).
Mr. Brody and I are two peas in the same pod and we are glad the pod is not big enough for a TV.
Would I kid u?
Smartfella
