Jeff Alexander has worked for a public-radio program, but he has never been involved with educational television. Which hasn't stopped him from writing an entire book on what a great learning experience TV can be.
Emphasis on "can."
"TV is a medium that sticks with us and that teaches us stuff in a way that's easier to retain," said Alexander in a recent phone interview. "It can be educational. The book kind of ... takes TV as a more reliable source than real life."
While growing up in Minneapolis, where he still lives with his wife, Lora, and 3-year-old son, Max, Alexander learned to read from watching TV and has spent considerable time gleaning material from the tube. He parlayed that avocation into work as a "recapper" of series such as "24," "Burn Notice" and "Big Love" for the widely read website Television Without Pity.
That spawned "A TV Guide to Life: How I Learned Everything I Needed to Know From Watching Television" (Berkley, $14), in which Alexander's experience penning bon mots for "A Prairie Home Companion" and watching sharp-witted sitcoms served him well.
Alexander took time out from a full-time job and his Internet gigs (he also has a blog, velcrometer.blogspot.com) to talk about his favorite medium.
Q According to the book, you think it's easier to retain things from TV if they're pithy or funny or clever. So jingles have a better chance of being retained than a documentary about Alexander Hamilton.
A Oh, yeah. I think the more dry something is, the less likely it is to be retained. I'm sure that there's a lot of stuff on the History Channel that you could find about John Adams, but compare its ratings to the HBO miniseries on Adams earlier this year, and give people a quiz who watched each show and see how much they retained.
