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Glancing across the first floor of Ackerman Union, I notice the people who zone out by either staring blankly at a wall in front of them or looking at one of the numerous televisions.

Either way, it’s all the same.

If you saw the sucky programming the College Television Network has to offer, you’d be watching the wall, too. By presenting a hodgepodge of news and music, CTN presumes to tell us what we want to watch, which apparently is a lot of music videos.

The strange part about the videos is nobody’s really watching it, because to “watch” means to absorb the television screen with your eyes and ears. Yet, everyone knows at Ackerman’s busiest moments, the speakers are inaudible against the crowds of yapping mouths. CTN thus becomes not another entertainment source but a receptacle of beautiful images trying to wrest your attention away from your organic chemistry homework or the appetizing smell of food.

The emptiness of CTN’s images are fine for what they are, but it’s quite disturbing to see it at the Wooden Center. There are folks running the treadmills and listening to their CD players but yet are intently watching and thinking ... well what? They aren’t really thinking anything. Instead, they look like a bunch of shallow zombies only interested in the flickering color pixels.

I tremble with fear to think that Wooden’s and Ackerman’s TV screens have reduced UCLA students to a corral of image-mongers. I hope that isn’t true.

In fact, I believe CTN serves a higher purpose than that.

CTN functions as a cushion for people who can’t easily connect with others. Some say, on the contrary, that TV compartmentalizes everyone into their own little world and makes them stay there. And you probably could say that too if those people were watching a real good TV show, but since CTN chooses to showcase lame videos, that isn’t the case.

The common drivel that CTN picks up and shows only serves for ambience. It’s also a nice way to break a conversation or get rid of those weird uncomfortable silences. Just the other day, I had a cool conversation with someone in Ackerman because we were making fun of a Moby video ... CTN bringing people together ... yep, yep.

Watching TV at Ackerman and Wooden is meaningless. The videos are easily replaceable and that’s a good thing. Just like hanging out at the Coffee Bean or Kerckhoff Coffeehouse, people go there for the mood, not necessarily to drink the coffee. It seems the useless noise around such places makes people concentrate harder on studying, or less conscious about themselves when talking.

So the next time you walk inside Ackerman, thank CTN for giving you crappy programming. If it had anything better, you wouldn’t be able to make fun of it.

Dang’s television column runs Tuesdays.