TV brings out the kid in him

Film critics have lifelong love affairs with the movies. Television critics have somewhat more complicated relationships with TV. It's not that we don't enjoy watching TV for a living. I certainly do. There's just not a lot of romance to it, that's all. Here's how glamorous this job is. Every so often someone actually says to me, "Would you like to become the film critic some day?" I try to keep the edge out of my voice as I respond, "No, I enjoy writing about television, thanks." If I weren't so polite I'd add, "Besides, most of the movies worth seeing are only on cable." Of all the critics writing in this space, only I must routinely defend my attachment to the medium I cover. "You have to watch TV all day?" people say when they learn what I do. Only the children understand my emotional bond. When they learn what I do, they ask me in amazement, "So you get to watch TV all day?" Of course I have ambivalent feelings toward TV. Everyone in my profession does. And I'm reminded of it every time a wide-eyed kid tells me I have a cool job. When I was growing up in Billings, Mont., TV was my most faithful companion. My mom remarried when I was 9, we moved twice, and I found myself out of sorts. I did well in school, except for that part on the report card where teachers commented on how well you got along with others. My stepdad took us on weekend camping trips. I wasn't too thrilled at first, because I couldn't bring the TV with me. Then I got a battery-powered Coronado audio cassette recorder for Christmas. I began taping TV shows off the air and replaying them over and over in the camper. I made audiotapes of "The Tonight Show," "Get Smart," stock-car races, "M*A*S*H" and "Saturday Night Live." I filled a 90-minute cassette with TV theme songs. I can still whistle the "Lou Grant" theme today. Today I'm glad I can look back at my childhood and see the budding TV critic at work. Still, I wish I had spent more time reading and less time marinated in media. I envy my wife. She grew up on a farm in Minnesota, where she and her best friend read books to each other. Books take her into anterooms of the imagination I wouldn't be able to find if you gave me a map. It wasn't until college that the wide world of ideas finally opened up to me. I weaned myself off the tube. At nights I came home from the library in time to catch David Letterman. But that was about it. After college I actually lived without TV for a while. Nearly a decade of prime time - a span from "Miami Vice" to "Twin Peaks" - passed without notice. I wanted to write about ideas. I tried working at a think tank in Washington, D.C. That lasted 14 months. Then I made a run at a Ph.D., which was even less successful. At least the D.C. job paid me to fail. Graduate school left me $25,000 in the hole. I took a secretarial job in Chicago to pay it off. It was then that I began noodling around on the Internet. Here, in hundreds of messages posted to various online bulletin boards, I began to find my voice. I didn't write about politics or religion or social policy or anything else I had studied. I wrote about late-night television. It was the one part of the TV schedule I knew and loved the best, and I found I had surprisingly strong views on the "state of the late." I began writing a weekly newsletter to chronicle the battle royal going on between my man Dave (then recently defected to CBS) and his archrival Jay Leno. Some of my Internet readers, it turns out, worked for newspapers, and soon I was writing for pay. Quite suddenly I had transformed myself into a TV critic. Less than three years later I was in Kansas City. You might conclude that I found writing about TV to be a bit of a comedown, a consolation prize for the frustrated academic. The honest truth, though, is that I feel lucky to be a TV critic. After my faith and my marriage, this newspaper job is the greatest blessing to have come into my life. The reason it has worked out so well, I believe, is that from the start my editors gave me the freedom to fashion my beat the way that I saw fit. I've done that by following two basic rules of thumb. They're not profound, but they do reconcile my two sides - the hyperactive, short-attention-span child and the intellectually curious truth-seeking adult. Rule No. 1: Keep clicking. The average viewer is a creature of habit, watching the same eight or so channels most of the time. My challenge is to persuade my readers to try worthy programs they would not have found on their own. I usually don't see more than three episodes of a series per season. I scroll through my TV's on-screen program guide, looking for new things to watch. In my weekly column, which appears every Tuesday in FYI, I review at least three shows that are as different from one another as possible. Even when I get stuck on a show - I've seen most of the new "Sopranos" episodes, for instance - you won't see me write about it more than twice in a season. I rarely watch TV passively. I talk back to my TV set. If a show catches my eye, I start scribbling notes on whatever is handy. Later I collect episodes on my office TiVo, then watch them all at once. After the review is done, I lose interest and move on to something else. Rule No. 2: Write about television as though it mattered. A TV show may not be of existential significance, and it may have the approximate life span of soda fizz. But when you write about TV, you write about something every American understands. It's as messy and profane and commercially corrupted as any institution in a democratic society. It has the power to shape public perception instantly. It is our shrine to 9/11 and Lady Di and O.J. It is your neighbor's first - and often only - source for news of the world. During my six years as critic, the landscape of television has shifted dramatically. More people, on average, are watching cable channels than broadcast TV. Digital television has arrived. Local stations have been pinched by declining viewership. More channels are owned by fewer companies. And I have seen television become more hyperactive, more demeaning and more corrosive. This doesn't bother me personally, because I'm an adult and I write for adult readers. But in the three decades since I was raised on TV, researchers have proven conclusively that it stunts creativity, fuels aggression and encourages unhealthy habits in our children. I know I sound like a hypocrite, but I believe parents should not let their kids watch TV until they've developed strong reading and play habits. I also believe that any good critic must be comfortable living with contradictions. To reach Aaron Barnhart, phone (816) 234-4790 or online at www.tvbarn.com. @ART CAPTION:Aaron Barnhart has been The Star's TV critic since January 1997. @ART:Photo (color) @ART CREDIT:TIM JANICKE/The Kansas City Star