Back in the late 80's, actor Matt Frewer starred as the pop culture icon Max Headroom in a series entitled "20 Minutes into the Future: The Max Headroom Show". This sci-fi series had Frewer playing investigative reported Edison Carter as well as his alter ego, Max Headroom. It was a series as ahead of its time as its title implied. It stands up quite well today even though it aired almost 20 years ago.

In one episode of the series, entitled "Whacketts", a tragedy strikes an area and people are rummaging through the rubble to rescue their television sets. They are even risking their lives to do it, all to watch some outrageous game show on an obscure channel. Edison Carter can't believe what he's seeing. Someone makes a comment about how the government will "provide free TV sets to the needy" so it doesn't make sense people will risk their lives to save a TV. It turns out that the TV show they're all watching is a carrier for a kind of "video drug" that makes people feel euphoric and very quickly addicts them.

While I think we are a long way from having video drugs (though this might explain the fascination with American Idol), I found this article on Slashdot very interesting. To quote:

"SFGate has the story of the cutoff date for those rabbit ear antennas that some of us grew up with (Feb. 19, 2009). Now while the story of analog vs. digital TV has been beaten to death, still I think there is something more here. 'The Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration... said it is setting aside $990 million to pay for the boxes. Each home can request up to two $40 coupons for a digital-to-analog converter box, which consumer electronics makers such as RCA and LG plan to produce.' Beyond my disdain for most TV to begin with, I am blown away that with all of our current problems — homelessness and crime on the home front, war fighting and terrorism abroad — our government is seriously going to spend this much money on upgrading peoples' televisions."

No, our government isn't quite at the point where it will give television sets to the needy, but apparently it IS about to spend almost a billion dollars to make sure people with outdated televisions can watch digital broadcasts on their old analog TVs.

Art (the Max Headroom Show) is here being somewhat imitated by life...