I hate to be accused of waxing nostalgic but I can't help but notice how weird television has become these days.

I remember how television was in the '60s when I was a kid. You had three choices - ABC, NBC or CBS.

You could watch the local PBS channel, but nobody did.

And the next day when you went to school, fully a third of the kids you talked to watched the same thing you did.

Shows like "Gilligan's Island," "Hogan's Heroes," "The Beverly Hillbillies," "Green Acres."

People in their 30s and 40s have those theme songs deeply imbedded in their brains.

Nickelodeon, the kid channel, runs a feature called "Nick at Night." They show reruns of those old shows.

My guess is that no kids watch "Nick at Night." People my age do.

But as goofy and corny as those old shows were, we all saw them for what they were - goofy and corny.

You always knew Gilligan was going to do something stupid. You always knew Colonel Hogan was going to make the Germans look stupid.

Those shows weren't trying to teach you something or make a social statement.

And those shows united us. We all watched them. They were a thread of commonality between all Americans.

Today, television is way too diverse.

Ever look at those "Primestar" ads? They try to hook you by boasting 110 channels. That scares me.

We have this Triax company streaming nonsense into our home.

We have 40-some channels. We pay almost 30 bucks a month for the privilege and we don't even have any "premium" channels.

In my estimation, we have about 35 too many channels.

All these channels. It drives me nuts. I can't keep up. I don't know what number corresponds to what channel.

Television is no longer that common thread among Americans. Save for a few top-rated shows on network TV, nobody watches the same thing.

And most of the stuff on television these days is pushing a social cause or political viewpoint.

Kids veg out in front of MTV for hours. Have you ever watched that stuff? Talk about your social deviance.

I remember when MTV first came on the air. It was basically a way to see your favorite band in concert.

The videos were performance based - a band playing a live concert. I like that.

There are still videos like that, but mostly the videos are bizarre social commentaries. It's like pornography. Once those images are imbedded in the minds of impressionable youth, they remain. And they influence.

Lots of TV is like that.

Did you see what show won the "Peoples' Choice" award this year?

"Ellen."

Do you really believe out of all that TV out there that "Ellen" was the peoples' choice?

Please.

But hey, that's the social commentary of TV. It tells us what's cool and acceptable. If we disagree, we are deviant.

Basically, it tells us that depravity is acceptable. That deviance is acceptable.

What used to shock us is now passe.

Look around.

Look at T-shirts and bumper stickers. Look at ads.

People marketing their products have to try harder and harder to shock us into taking a look at their ad instead of their competitors'.

Irreverence has become the norm.

I see these decals on the back windows of pickup trucks all the time.

It's a little "Dennis the Menace" type kid. He has his back turned toward me and he is looking over his shoulder with a mischievous grin on his face.

He is peeing on - depending on the preference of the owner of the pickup - a Ford emblem, a Chevy emblem, a Dale Earnhardt No. 3, a Jeff Gordon No. 24 or whatever.

His pee is splashing all over. It's really quite cute, eh?

But you know what?

They wouldn't market stuff like that if we wouldn't buy it.

And there wouldn't be all that nonsense on television if we didn't watch it. [[In-content Ad]]