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Newton Minnow declared TV to be a "vast wasteland" in 1961. He would know, since he was chairman of the FCC at the time. Few of us ever imagined that the following 40 years would produce a landscape much more vast and even more dissipated.

As I see it, Mr. Minnow had it pretty good back then. Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors, the first opera commissioned for television, had its premier on The NBC Television Theater, on Christmas Eve 1951. NBC continued to sponsor opera broadcasts in the hope of bringing viewers to TV the way The NBC Symphony and Toscannini had brought listeners to radio a generation earlier. NBC also introduced Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd in 1959; it immediately became part of opera repertoire.

CBS held forth with live drama on Playhouse 90, which ran from 1955 until 1961. Requiem for a Heavyweight, The Miracle Worker, and Judgment at Nuremberg are only a few examples of those lavish live productions. And a thousand thanks to CBS for Leonard Bernstein's Young Peoples' Concerts with The New York Philharmonic. Those concerts ran from 1959 to 1970 and brought countless delights to young and old alike. Bernstein worked hard to dispel the image of classical music as formal and stuffy - I especially remember a program called Berlioz Takes a Trip. Maybe he was aiming at the teenage audience with that broadcast of 1969.

But there is hope today. There is one program every year that I never want to miss. I wouldn't entrust it to a TiVo or VCR. I'm always home, beside my TV, for the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. These three wacky hours remind me just how enjoyable live TV can be. Sure, I could walk two blocks to Columbus Circle and see it right there on the street, but it wouldn't be the same. I'd miss that look of disbelief on the faces of the TV anchors as they read their corny lines from the Teleprompter.

Yes, I could crowd onto the sidewalk downtown, but I'd miss the widespread panic as performers scurry into position in front of the huge Macy's canopy just in time for a playback. My favorite group is always the Radio City Rockettes. These gals can do a split, dip their tushes into a puddle of freezing water in the middle of Broadway, and come up tapping and wearing a smile. Now, that takes real talent.

Maybe it isn't the lack of high drama or musical sophistication that makes today's programming dull. Missy Elliott can be just as imaginative as Bernstein (at least for five minutes) and Tracey Ullman's routines are like tiny, highly polished fragments of theater. But what would Missy or Tracey do if they had 90 minutes of time at their disposal?

Today producers and editors take the "raw footage" back to the studio and massage it like pie dough. Once it's all smooth and sweet they spice it up with some MTV-style editing and add a few interviews with that silly effect of a hand-held camera swaying from side to side. Gotta keep it interesting.

I'll take my annual three hours of TV with the rough edges and caffeine-induced excitement intact. So what if the majorette from Mississippi drops her baton? For those three hours, it seems as if anything could happen. If it does, I'll see it live on television.

Chris Keeler is a home theater designer and custom installer in Manhattan. He can be reached by email or by phone at 212-307-0082 or 917-517-9904.