Last modified: Friday, November 6, 2009 2:17 AM EST REILLY: TV was better when it was worse According to figures compiled by the Neilsen Company, the people who keep track of America's television viewing habits, children watch a lot of TV. In related breaking news, scientists have discovered that water is wet and the sun rises in the east. We'll have more on these stories as they develop. But back to television. According to a story in the Los Angeles Times, the survey found that in the last three months of 2008, the amount of television usage by children reached an eight-year high, with kids ages 2 to 5 watching the screen for more than 32 hours a week on average and those ages 6 to 11 watching more than 28 hours. To this, as a concerned parent, I have only this to say: "Amateurs." Oh sure, today's youngsters may watch a greater volume of television programming, but in my view, what counts is the density of that programming. When I was a kid - shortly after the discovery of television by the Lewis and Clark expedition - programming for kids was mainly a few hours on Saturday morning and an hour or so after school. (Think Salty Brine and Major Mudd). It was a constrained TV universe but it was intense. First, you had the whole Warner Bros. ouvre of intensely violent, anarchic, often sexist and sometimes overtly racist images that would send any modern child behavioral psychologist into catatonic shock. And let's not go into the episodes that had Bugs Bunny dress in drag to deceive Elmer while Wagner played in the background. Do you really want to think about the Freudian implications of that? Me neither. But even more disturbing, I believe, were some of the newer shows from such family-friendly studios as Hanna-Barbera. "Space Ghost" had its eponymous hero patrolling the galaxy with a couple of parentless teenagers - all of them wearing masks and tights. And, yes, the show was exactly as creepy as it sounds. There were no attempts to save the rainforest or rescue endangered species in these shows. (Try to imagine Dora the Explorer dropping a 10-ton weight on the head of the coyote.) There were no tributes to diversity or the value of teamwork. (It was always Bugs vs. Daffy, and the duck always lost.) There were, in short, no positive values or educational content whatsoever. (Except maybe the information that if you really needed an anvil to drop on someone, the Acme Co. could provide overnight delivery.) We may not have watched as much TV as modern kids, but, by golly, it was worse TV. For me, the only lasting after effect has been a preference for anti-social cartoons. Now if you'll excuse me, Glenn Beck is on. TOM REILLY is a Sun Chronicle news editor who frequently writes about television, probably because he sat too close to the screen as a boy. He can be reached at 508-236-0332 or at treilly@thesunchronicle.com. Read his blog at thesunchronicle.com/reilly.