There are two reasons for this, Nielsen surmises. Some people in these hard times can’t afford to upgrade to digital transmission, now the law of the land. Secondly, younger people, the digitized generation, don’t need a TV set anymore, in the same way they have no use for a land-line telephone. They can watch any and all TV shows, usually for nothing, on their I-Pad or laptop, or simply text each other all day and only watch digital programming like “Funny or Die.” TV is still king, but media competition is starting to invade its kingdom.

How does this affect people with disabilities?

To start with, American TV has never been a friend to the disabled. For at least the last thirty years, everyone from Norman Lear to today’s activist PWD – performers with disabilities – have been beseeching the networks to open the door to lead characters and actors with disabilities, and precious little has changed. Statistically, you see more disabled characters around the fringes than you saw back in the 80’s, but rarely are they the leads and rarely is their own story about anything else but their disability. They are, for the most part, tokens of diversity.

I have never seen a fictional approximation of myself on TV -- a 60-something year old man, fairly fit, with the same problems as everyone else, plying his trade, loving his wife and kids, who just happens to be a wheelchair user. I’m sure you feel the same way. Your reality and the highly filtered, highly commercial reality of TV rarely meet.

The dearth of TV characters who happen to be disabled is puzzling. Is it because every big macher in show business is nervous around, say, a blind girl or a guy in a power chair? Maybe the collective “they” don’t think Americans want to watch someone with a disability unless he/she is a) Helen Keller, b) a very brave child, or c) one good, heart-tugging storyline. That can’t be the case. All those execs and producers can’t be that myopic. Where’s the bottle neck?

It could just be the pity factor. TV viewers want to see characters that are fantasies of themselves, not those who are the least bit compromised or impaired or struggling in any way. For much the same reason, how many genuinely poor people do you see on network TV? Not since Fred Sanford, if you are old enough to remember that old coot. Betty White aside, they don’t like old, either. Or the overweight.

The pity factor runs deep. I recently had an encounter with a bright-eyed nine-year-old boy who announced that he felt sorry for me. I patiently told him why he didn’t need to feel that way, that I can still do 95% of what I once did and still have a lot of fun doing it. He thought about that for a minute, then replied, “Yeah, but I still feel sorry for you.”

But, wait, stop. Pity or not, the engine that runs commercial TV, along with movies, videogames, and everything else produced in Hollywood, is money. Don’t people with disabilities have money? The answer is, you’re darn right they/we do. The disabled have tremendous buying power. One recent economic report pegged the annual disposable income of the disabled at one trillion dollars– that’s trillion with a “t.” Collectively, we are worth a trillion bucks a year to the American economy. Of that, we have $220 billion dollars of discretionary income, meaning income we can spend on appliances, trips to the Grand Canyon, entertainment, and all of those products sold on TV.

The old paradigm – really old paradigm – is that
the disabled are a segment of society in need and deserve “help” to better their lives. The new paradigm, hopefully, is that the disabled are a rich market of savvy consumers who should be listened to, catered to, and treated as absolute equals in every facet of American economic life. As Michael Collins recently wrote on these pages, he sees himself as “a mini-venture capitalist on wheels.” He’s investing his part of our collective trillion dollars in the health care industry, the adaptive-equipment industry, and every other industry from cable TV to potato chips. You too are such a capitalist. Start putting your money where your real interests lie.

Back to TV. Can you imagine a local large-city, network-affiliated station that doesn’t have a much-considered blend of black, Hispanic, and Asian on-air news talent? They know their market. But for some reason that baffles me, they don’t have a much-considered blend including people with disabilities. Just one anchor or reporter with a disability would certainly appeal to a large segment of their potential audience, not to mention what it would do for the image of the disabled.

All said, time is on the side of the disabled, I think. We are not only worth a trillion dollars and rising, we are getting smarter, more powerful, more numerous, more influential, more self-sufficient, and live longer. We’ll seep into the media and marketing systems and change them internally. As Kareem Dale, Special Assistant to President Obama for Disability Policy, recently said, when the most powerful man or woman in the room has a disability, then things will change.

Meanwhile, patronize those goods and services, and TV shows, that pay attention to you. It’s the American way.