Years ago, Walter Cronkite was the anchor of CBS News. At the time that was the leading national TV news show. Cronkite was a great newsman.
One night he wanted to show that he couldn't cover the news in depth in half an hour. He held up a mock-up of the New York Times. The real news had been replaced by a complete transcript of the previous evening's CBS News show.
All of the words in a TV news show fit easily on the front page alone. There was a lot of empty white space. The New York Times has more news on its front page alone than n whole TV news program. And a typical full-sized big-city newspaper has around fifty pages.
People don't read the whole paper. But they are picking and choosing for themselves from a source of information that is literally fifty times as rich as a television show. And you choose for yourself, while a television show is linear and shows you only the things the producers have chosen for you.
But there are things you want to see. You have a flower in your avatar, it is one example of what people want to see. Your country is Gabon and without photo and video I'd have no idea what Gabon and its people look like (just like you would't be able to imagine Russia in winter). And films.
Now I can find this on youtube and I don't watch TV at all.
Or is the mobile phone there to replace both?
Yes that's true, but there are things that television teaches us to. It depends of channel or program that we choose.
But in general I think yes the books are better. So you're right.
