NY STATE'S SNOOZE TV
Reality television has certainly had its ups and downs. Sometimes you'll be privy to some very compelling viewing, as many of us saw last week with the finale of American Idol. Other times the show is just dreck, as many others saw with that same American Idol finale. And some of us hunt the Internet on a semi-regular basis for DVD copies of the Fox reality mini-series My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé, no doubt the finest moment of the reality television genre. But that's just me. These days, New Yorkers have a brand new way to experience the reality show thanks to the New York State Legislative Channel, available through your local cable provider. If you like reality television, check it out. I dare you.
Together, our Assembly and State Senate have developed what is, without a doubt, the most boring, unwatchable garbage in the history of reality programming, possibly in the history of all television. When it was first announced, legislators across the state hailed the station as something like a local C-SPAN, offering viewers gavel-to-gavel coverage of the most important debates affecting New York.
"Now not only will New Yorkers have a greater opportunity to sit in on the debates and votes from each house's respective Capitol chambers, but they also will be able to watch broadcasts of the Senate and the Assembly's public budget hearings and joint conference committees," said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver when the channel first went live in January. "By expanding the availability of our televised sessions to viewers beyond the Capital District and by adding the broadcast of our other proceedings, we are moving closer to establishing television coverage of our government through a C-SPAN-like channel."
Not quite. You don't get to see much debate. You don't get to see much of anything. During an Assembly session last week, the camera spent most of its time squarely focused on the desk at the front of the chamber. It is quite a nice desk, but whether it is deserving of such a great deal of face time is debatable.
When you do get to see your elected officials at work, they tend to be working on nonsense. At least it would appear so to the untrained eye. Most Assembly bills pass with little dissent, if not unanimously, and most focus on such esoteric concerns that they seem to barely hold the interest of the actual legislators, who spend most of their time chatting amongst themselves. They're probably joking about their desire to be anywhere but Albany, and I don't blame them. During my particular session, Brooklyn's Joan Millman, filling in for Silver in the speaker's role, had to repeatedly chastise her Assembly colleagues for being too loud. At one point, she even asks them to leave the chambers if they want to speak. No one listens, of course.
When they aren't speaking to each other, they're addressing the State from the floor. Surely this is what Silver meant by granting access to the legislative process to ordinary citizens. But do those citizens really care to hear about what fourth grade class from whomever's district decided to make the trip to Albany today? Maybe to take pity on them, since those students had to endure a first-hand look at the mind-numbingly dull legislative process. At least I had my couch.
But most of the time the viewer gets nothing but silence. The camera stays on all the time, but no one speaks during the tedious voting process. The New York State Legislative Channel amounts to little more than a stone silent look at an impressive desk. Want to make things interesting? Turn the cameras and microphones around and broadcast the private conversations. At best, it would give the viewer an insight into the backroom deal making, or at least the idle chatter, that accompanies a legislative day. At worst, those legislators would clam up, and Millman would get the silence she was so desperately looking for.
When greeting one class from a Mt. Vernon elementary school, Millman told them she hoped they would "leave having learned some important lessons" as they watched their government hard at work. The lesson that they likely learned is that, as far as school field trips go, the Assembly sucks. To be fair, the State Senate is no better. A recent edition of their session, broadcast for everyone's entertainment, found legislator after legislator hailing the appointment of a new government official, each saying the same thing the others had said, over and over again. Our government at work. Rather than teach school children a lesson on civics, the New York State Legislative Channel could just as easily be used to punish bad behavior. Now kids, be quiet, or you'll have to stare at a big desk for three hours.