The problem with this argument is that TV is one of the few mediums that is seeing its usage rate increase. There was a recent survey that made news by claimin

The problem with this argument is that TV is one of the few mediums that is seeing its usage rate increase. There was a recent survey that made news by claiming that TV had dropped ten percent in the "most important gadget/device in your life" list until people actually looked at the data and noticed that over two years "flat-screen TV" (a separate item on the survey) had risen to 10% on the list... It is hard to make a serious claim that TV is not getting better every year and the fragmenting of the market has brought niche programming that would have been unheard of less than a decade ago. The claim that TV was the new opiate of the masses was made long before Shirky came onto the scene and it will continue to be made long after he is dead. The television landscape is in a state of rapid flux, the delivery mechanism will probably be radically different in ten years, but in thirty years when children need to go to a museum to see what a newspaper looked like they will still be watching TV.