Television

If flames were to reach the top of Mt. Wilson, home to the region's TV and FM radio transmitters, what would happen? Severe damage could disrupt cellphone service, as well as television and radio programming for those who receive signals over the air. It also could interrupt some emergency law enforcement communications. But Los Angeles police and fire departments do not use the tower, and neither does the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Mt. Wilson is home to more than two dozen towers that occupy its peak just north of Sierra Madre.

Getting kids to exercise more and cut down on television watching can dramatically reduce their risk of being overweight. No surprise there. We even know just how much activity they should have and how little TV they should watch. And still the job is apparently Herculean for kids to do and parents to enforce. The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that boys take at least 11,000 steps per day, girls 13,000 steps per day, and total screen time should be limited to two hours per day.

With continued concerns that federal officials aren't doing enough to prepare the public for the upcoming switch to all-digital broadcast television next year, Wilmington, N.C., has volunteered to be the government's guinea pig. The Federal Communications Commission plans to announce today that broadcasters in the coastal city of about 96,000 -- the nation's 135th-largest media market -- will turn off their analog signals permanently on Sept. 8.

Colin Powell may have provided the swing-vote endorsement, but if Sen. Barack Obama should find himself delivering a victory speech on Nov. 4, he might want to include a shout-out to Philo Farnsworth and Vladimir Zworykin, two of the men most commonly considered the founding fathers of television. Not since the Kennedy-Nixon race has television played such a significant role in a presidential election.

In the beginning, the TV picture was small and fuzzy and black-and-white. Looking good was not the medium's main concern -- to be seen at all was the point. The production values of "The Honeymooners," one of the funniest shows television has ever produced, were approximately that of a vaudeville sketch. If Jackie Gleason had ever tripped, the whole Kramden apartment would have come down around him.

"Sometimes people don't understand it," said Ruby Gettinger by telephone from Savannah, Ga., where she lives. "I'm a very happy person. They ask me, 'Ruby, if you had to do it all over again, would you be big or small?' I always say I'd rather be big. Because I feel like I'm a better person because of it because I don't judge people. And I'm not mean. I like the person I am.

Already the signs are there, in the most unexpected and disparate places. "60 Minutes," which for recent years has seemed something of an anachronism, is suddenly a ratings juggernaut. On Fox's "24," Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) finds himself in a less cowboy-worshiping-and-torture-tolerant nation.

It was a strange, stuttering year for television. It's no knock against collective bargaining to point out the writers strike made a constitutionally skittish medium even more erratic than usual. On the broadcast networks, shows came and went and came and went confusingly through the winter, spring and summer; fall, when it arrived, was underwhelming. (Premium and basic cable were somewhat inured to those shocks, but it was a slow year there, too.

Dear Santa: Am I too late? I was hoping that now that you've got the presents put under the trees, you might have time for my list. I'm putting a few TV wishes out there in the hope that you'll notice and make them come true. * There have been some good shows, but I think you'd agree that, overall, 2008 came up short. Now what? TV is more important than usual, since no one can afford to leave the house, and people getting laid off have a lot of extra time on their hands.

Herb Scannell, who helped build Viacom Inc.'s Nickelodeon into a children's television juggernaut, is wading into online entertainment. Scannell will unveil today Next New Networks, a company that plans to put more than 30 of what it calls "micro-television networks" on the Internet. The networks will have their own websites and feature entertainment segments lasting three to 12 minutes each. Much of the content will be supplied by Internet communities.