Well, of course, now I know that's not how we watch television at all, especially today, with so many choices available. More likely, we come home from work and turn on the set as we go about doing other things. Often the TV is on during dinner and remains on until we go to bed. Even when we are watching a program, our attention may be distracted. By the time we go to bed, we won't remember whether something was on That's Incredible! or The Nature of Things with David Suzuki.
In the 1970s, Bob McLean was host of a noon talk show on CBC and invited me to be a guest. At one point, he asked me out of the blue, “What do you think the world will be like in one hundred years?” My answer went something like this: “If there are still humans around by then, I think they will curse us for two things — nuclear weapons and television.” Surprised by my answer, he ignored both my suggestion that humans might not survive another hundred years and the nuclear issue to blurt out, “Why television?” My response was, “You've just asked a pretty profound question. Suppose I had replied, ‘Bob, that's a tough one. I'll have to think about it' and then proceeded to think, not say anything, for ten seconds. You'd cut away to a commercial within three seconds, because TV can't tolerate dead air. That's the problem; it demands instant response, which means there's no profundity.” Thinking back on that reply, I'm rather impressed with it, because I still believe that today.
I worry about the impact of computers and television, because the cyberworld is seductive — not because it is so real, but because in many ways it's better than reality. You can have the kinkiest sex yet not worry about getting caught by a partner or contracting aids, and you can hit the wall in a car race or get shot down in a dogfight in the air and walk away undamaged. Why bother with the real world when you can get all the heart-thumping thrills of the real thing and none of the risks or harm? I always thought our programs on nature would be different; they would show people the natural world through wonderful images that would teach them to love and treasure it. But now I realize that I, too, am creating a virtual world, a fabricated version of the real thing.
If we want to do a program on diverse life forms in the Arctic or the Amazon, we send a cameraperson to those places to spend months trying to get as many sensational shots as possible. Then, back in an editing room, from hours of film we pull together the best pictures and create a sequence of images — polar bears, seals, and whales in the Arctic or parrots, Indians, piranhas, and jaguars in the Amazon. In the end we have created an illusion of activity that belies the truth. If anyone actually visits the Amazon or the Arctic expecting to see what they saw in a film, they will be very disappointed, because the one thing nature needs is the one thing television cannot tolerate: time. Nature needs time to reveal her secrets, but television demands the juxtaposition of one hard-earned shot after the other, a kind of nature hopped up on steroids to keep the viewers' attention so they don't run out of patience and switch channels. Without understanding the need for time, what is perceived is a Disney-fied world providing so many jolts of excitement per minute.
Today, in almost any city in the developed world, cable television provides instant access to sixty to one hundred channels, and a satellite dish can deliver hundreds of channels. Merely grazing through such a vast offering with a remote control is liable to consume half a program. Whizzing through the channels, one is struck with the sense that Bruce Springsteen is right when he sings, “Fifty-seven channels and nothin' on.” As the viewer clicks past, every program tries to reach out of the set, grab the person by the throat, and insist, “Don't you dare change channels!” How does a show do that? By becoming louder, shorter, faster, sexier, more sensational, more violent. It's no accident that The Nature of Things with David Suzuki has offered programs on psychopaths, female castration, and the penis. But there is a price to be paid to acquire that audience: when you jump into a cesspool, like everyone else you look like a turd.
In 1992, before the Earth Summit in Rio, I screened a program on the first United Nations — sponsored conference on the environment in Stockholm in 1972 as reported by The Nature of Things. In 1972 there might have been two or three channels competing with CBC, and The Nature of Things was only a half hour long. To my surprise, there were three- to four-minute on-camera interviews with the anthropologist Margaret Mead and the biologist Paul Ehrlich. Today, The Nature of Things with David Suzuki is an hour long (although up to fourteen minutes may be taken up by commercials), but we would never run an on-camera interview longer than twenty to thirty seconds. Images, far more than words or ideas, determine what is on television programs today, and depth and content are sacrificed. What I find creepy is that I too felt the 1972 interviews dragged and were boring; in spite of my desire for more meat in my information, I wanted it sped up.
When I began a career in television, I realized how important the applications of scientific ideas and techniques were to people's lives, and I thought my role was to make those applications accessible to the general public. By watching my programs, I thought, the audience would acquire the information they needed to make informed decisions about how science and technology would be managed. I wanted to empower the public, but the opposite happened because of the nature of the medium. Regular viewers of The Nature of Things with David Suzuki watch the program on faith that what we present is important and true, and they come to expect me to tell them what to do or to act on their behalf. If I phone a politician's office, even the prime minister's, chances are very good that my call will be returned within half an hour — not because I'm an important person, but because an informed politician knows that a million and a half people watch my shows regularly. Those viewers have empowered me, putting an enormous weight of responsibility on me and on the producers of our programs to ensure that the shows are impeccably researched.
AS THE HEAD OF a large research lab, I was constantly at the center of activity. If not actually carrying out an experiment myself, I would be having discussions with various members of the team, reading new publications, arguing about what we should be doing next, talking about student projects, and so on. What a contrast with making a television program; although a shoot involves moments of intense activity and concentration, those are punctuated by long periods of sitting around waiting, and the host is the least important factor.
Each member of the filming team has a very specific role, though we all chip in when there's gear to be packed, lugged, or unpacked. Depending on the amount of funding we have, the size of the ensemble varies. On a well-funded shoot, there may be a producer, writer/researcher, cameraperson, camera assistant, soundperson, lighting person, and me, the host. I contribute the least in creating the film, yet I receive most of the credit for the final product. A producer, having conceived of a program and been intimately involved in the research, shooting, and editing, is often understandably ticked off when the program airs and that producer then meets someone who says, “Hey, Suzuki's show last night was great.”
My main preoccupation in a shoot is what I am going to say on-camera or what questions I need to ask in an interview to elicit the responses we want. When we are doing an interview, we generally know where the subject is going to fit in the show and what we want or expect that person to say. When the interviewee is, say, a spokesperson for a chemical company that is polluting a river, everyone knows The Nature of Things with David Suzuki is not going to be interested in all the good things the pr representatives tell us it is doing. The company spokesperson will try to stick to a message worked out beforehand whereas I will probe and spar, hoping the subject will let down his or her guard, reveal some emotion, or stray from the set refrain. At the same time, the company line will often be so patently false that, when backed up against the evidence, it will clearly be revealed as just a pr stance. An interview in those circumstances is an elaborate dance by both sides.