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January 18, 2005
Sleep TV (I Love Perry Mason!)
I love Perry Mason. I wish the National Association for the Advancement of Perry Mason still existed so I could join it. I would KILL for the Perry Mason board game. Perry Mason is brilliant. It features an incredible assortment of celebrities and wierd plots -- especially in the mid-1960s (which my local affliate is broadcasting now). Perry Mason interiors are lovely! And did you know that Raymond Burr was gay? (apparently this has generated some controversy among some of his viewers -- it's a generational thing, I guess). And he had a vineyard.
Anyway, I was sick off and on over the last few weeks which gave me plenty of opportunity to enjoy Perry Mason -- truth be told, now that I have TiVo, every night can be like those long, lovely Perry-Mason punctuated afternoon I remember from my mispent youth. Perry Mason has been on at noon on Channel 12 ever since I can remember and now it's on twice a day -- 2 hours of Perry! Kids have it so good these days!
What I especially love about Perry Mason while I'm sick is it's really good sleep television. I have a few shows that I love to sleep to: Victory Garden, Nature, any old movies, Masterrace Theater, and, for some reason, Monk -- I like shows that are kind of quiet, not too compelling, and ideally without a lot of commercials -- although the right kind of commercials are okay. Perry Mason features a lot of ITT tech and Western Culinary Institute ads, and court stenographer ads, too, of course -- gentle, optimistic testimonials of employability -- I can sleep to that!
I don't think I'm the only one who likes to sleep to TV, so my idea is that with the advent of digital television and potentially an infinite range of narrowcast channels, we should have a channel called "Sleep TV" entirely devoted to sleepable programming. Now, you might be tempted to say: "isn't that what PBS is all about?" But if you did, you'd be missing the enormous marketing potential for advertising aimed at sleeping or half-asleep viewers who are arguably more vulnerable to marketing messages, and certainly less likely to TiVo through the commercials. The ads would be produced by sleep-advertising specialists. I'm sure they'd do some research on what would be most suggestable to viewers without actually waking them up. Even if it turned out that people were pretty immune to advertising while actually asleep, I'll still bet you could get some pretty desperate advertisers to buy whatever pseudo science you could come up with to sell it -- at least for awhile. But no children's programming.
Posted by mary at January 18, 2005 10:45 PM
Comments
Right on, Mary! I LOVE Perry Mason too and used to watch it all the time when I was a kid.
I also like to fall asleep to TV. My hand-me-down TV from YOU has a nice feature that allows me to set it to turn off automatically but when I'm other places like my parents' I have to get out of bed to turn off the TV. So I'd appreciate a channel that would allow me to fall asleep to it and not be woken up at 4 am by some screeching tires in a car chase or by an obnoxious "Girls Gone Wild" commercial.
I'm also with you on enjoying the soothing TV pablum like Perry. Sometimes I like to watch a show that is like eating a big comforting bowl of macaroni and cheese.
Posted by: kathy at January 20, 2005 9:13 AM
I love Perry, too! The macaroni metaphor is great... He is good looking, no wonder he was gay... everyone loves him... smart... great sense of humor and great friends like Della and Paul... I recently took some time off work and found that I looked forward to Perry twice a day... there's something really positive about his approach and his personality that makes people feel good... and the sets are so very typical of the 60's. It's a great show to sleep to or watch. I actually miss him now that I'm back to work.
Posted by: laura at November 11, 2005 1:09 PM
I have been going (back) to sleep to taped Perry Mason reruns for, uh, 20 years. They're absolutely perfect for this. I taped the first two years in their entirety before Viacom pulled them off the Hallmark Channel last June.
I love your Sleep TV idea. Sign me up!
Posted by: Tom at December 14, 2005 12:17 AM
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