Does heavy TV viewing push people toward more liberal opinions? Or is it the impact of pre-existing leftist attitudes that lead viewers to invest more of their lives on television?

Analysts may argue about causation, but there’s no real doubt about correlation: an important new study from the Culture and Media Institute shows that those who describe themselves as “heavy” TV viewers embrace distinctly liberal attitudes on a range of crucial issues, placing them well to the left of those who report “light” TV viewing.

The study, conducted by the respected polling firm Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates in December, 2006, drew responses from more than 2000 Americans aged 18 and above. This investigation classified “heavy” TV viewers as those who devoted four hours (or more) per evening to watching the tube – and found 25% of the public fit that description. “Light” TV viewers (22.5% of the sample) were those who watched one hour per night or less. In other words, the self-described “heavy” viewers consumed, on average, more than four times the amount of nightly television as the self-consciously “light” viewers.

These starkly contrasting TV habits linked directly to dramatic differences in the two groups in terms of both attitudes and actions.

For instance, heavy TV viewers proved far more likely to agree with the statement “the government needs to get bigger” than were light viewers (26% to 12%). They were also more likely to endorse the idea that “government should be responsible for providing retirement benefits for everyone” (64% to 43%), much more likely to declare themselves “pro choice” on abortion (57% to 43%), more likely to back “a government run health system” (63% to 43%), and much less likely to attend church “at least weekly” (28% to 47%).

In fact, a range of significant real world behaviors connect in striking manner to the amount of television we consume. For instance, among those who commit four hours a night (or more) to the idiot box, a stunning 56% say they never volunteer time to “causes and charities”; only 27% of light viewers (one hour a night or less) make the same statement. When it comes to writing checks, there’s a similar disparity: 24% of heavy viewers give no charity at all, but only 11% of light TV viewers shun their charitable responsibilities.

Brian Fitzpatrick of the Culture and Media Institute, who helped direct the study and reported on its findings, made no formal attempt to explain the association between liberal attitudes and deep immersion in televised entertainment and information. At the study’s Washington, D.C. unveiling on June 6th, however, I delivered the keynote address and offered three possible explanations for the connection between leftist perspective and TV addiction (anyone who watches more than four hours every night almost certainly deserves the designation “addict”).

First, and most obviously, the heavy television watcher gives so much attention to the tube (a minimum of 28 hours per week, remember) that hell find scant time to spare for real-world relationships. Any individual who commits the bulk of his waking, non-working hours to his TV set will find it difficult to take part in the “little platoons of society” (family and neighborhood associations) that Edmund Burke cites as essential to liberty and conservatism.

A heavy TV viewer inevitably short-changes his communal and intimate relationships in favor of his engagement with the phantom characters on the tube. On the one hand, lonely people with few meaningful personal relationships will turn to the TV set to fill the empty spaces in their lives; on the other hand, TV addicts will end up harming the meaningful friendship and family connections that make life worth living.

Either way, the isolation associated with hours and hours in front of the tube leads to liberal values and viewpoints. In every election, single people prove vastly more likely to vote for Democrats than do married people: Republican Presidential candidates have won majorities of married voters even in elections where Democrats proved victorious overall (as with Bob Dole’s ill-starred race in 1996).

People who see themselves as alone in the world, with no network of spouses or fellow congregants, frequently turn to government as a source of support and comfort—just as they’d turn to television as a source of phony companionship. It makes sense that loneliness and helplessness and disconnection would breed both liberalism and heavy TV viewing; just as a vibrant family life, and communal participation, would produce less television and more conservative self-reliance.

Television news and televised entertainment both contribute to a sense that we live in a dark, dysfunctional, alarming world – and that perception reinforces the core concepts of liberalism. The left depends on a gloomy vision of the present and future – how else could its adherents demand sweeping, ambitious government initiatives to redistribute wealth, stop global warming, rescue the poor, repeal racism and homophobia, restructure health care, and so forth?.

By the same token, television demands constant reminders of bad news and conflict. News broadcasts (“If it bleeds, it leads”) rely on violence, crime, natural disasters, scary prospects, horrifying epidemics, economic setbacks, and ecological terrors. Reassuring realities – about the steady progress for rich and poor alike, in every corner of the globe – never make it to TV reports, nor do wholesome, ordinary, functional families command much attention in media entertainments.

The great TV critic Leo Tolstoy began “Anna Karenina” with the wise, unforgettable declaration: “All happy families are the same, but unhappy families are different in dramatic and compelling ways.” In other words, novels and sitcoms, movies and reality shows, seldom focus on normal, productive, stable, loving family units where the members obey the law, love their country and pay their taxes. Instead, the 28 hours a week (minimum) viewed by heavy TV watchers amounts to 28 hours a week of weirdness.

Wholesome stories (in the dated style of “Leave it Beaver” or “Father Knows Best”) have gone out of fashion not because they don’t exist anymore (most of us actually live such stories) but because the desperate competition for viewer attention (among literally hundreds of cable channels, video games, DVD’s, and networks) promotes a bias for the bizarre. This in turn connects to a sense that the world’s gone mad, and requires some sort of radical (usually leftist governmental initiative to avert looming apocalypse.

In this sense, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the only major issue in which heavy TV watchers take a more conservative viewpoint than light-viewing counterparts is immigration. Fully 66% of heavy TV viewers agree with the statement that America “should cut back or stop all immigration from other countries”; among light viewers, only 50% concur. Given the hysterical nature of much televised coverage of the suddenly diagnosed “immigration crisis”(anyone seen Lou Dobbs lately?), it should come as no shock that those who rely most heavily on television for their notions of reality would be the same folks who feel most prepared to demand radical measures on this issue. Continued...