I'm sure a few of you (at least in America) are familiar with the Colbert Report. I was watching it this evening, and Colbert was talking about how the old Sesame Street character 'Cookie Monster' no longer eats cookies all the time, but instead prefers fruit.

Now it makes sense for the writers of Sesame Street to make this change. With kids in America today approaching the weight of baby belugas, the more encouragement you can give them to eat healthy, the better the chance of making a positive impact. What really got me though, is that that piece was preceded by a mention that fruit is now the snack of choice by six year olds, replacing cookies at the top of the list. All of a sudden the connection became clear... (Not really, but for the sake of the topic...)

So my question is this; How much of an impact do you think the TV shows you watch as a kid have on your actions, habits, and thoughts?

Did Cookie Monster lead us down the path of fruity-ness? Or was this fate inevitable?

I remember A-Level media studies, the power of TV is incredible.
The first lesson we were taught about the power of the media. We all looked a tad sceptical when we were told that litterally half of what we kniow came from TV. but it's true. the teacher did a demonstration where she said taglines and corporate brands and we had to finish them. We were amazed, every single one we all knew, but thing was every product had been marketed through TV. It has a big effect on people.

Well didn't Bush won the election against Gore when Fox suddenly declared him the winner? While the other networks were saying it's to close too tell.. And all the other networks followed Fox because they didn't want to be behind with the news that someone had won.. That's the power of TV!

After watching the Simpsons, I ended up saying D'oh when I made a mistake. Or MMMMMMMM!!!

I saw that episode of the Colbert Report. One of my favorite ever. Cookie Monster sort of went back to cookies.
But OT: I think that TV can have that effect on our youth. Look at Hannah Montana, every girl under the age of 12 wants to wear a blonde wig now. That isn't really negative or positive really but it shows how the youth can follow TV.

There's no denying the power of TV, but to blame the cookie monster for fat kids is just stupid. The kids still have to get cookies from somewhere. If you don't want kids eating cookies then don't buy them, buy banananananas instead.

I need to look up Wikipedia to find out how to stop spelling banana.