Television (and movies, and telephones, and newspapers) _have_ brought education and culture to the masses. Really. Go back in time a couple of hundred years and talk to some regular folks. Salt 'o the Earth, industrious (maybe), and worldly even, but _not_ educated or culturally sensitive in great numbers. It's important to remember that the teeming masses didn't use all that time they spent not watching television reading Shakespeare and Newton...
No, but more of them are doing it now than in Shakespeare's time. (Okay, they were watching it on stage rather than on TV; the period's equivalent of soap operas and sitcoms...)
As a percentage and in absolute numbers there are more educated people, by nearly anyone's definition of education, than at any time in history up to now. And television, mass communication in general, plays a large part in that.
As hard as it is for many to imagine, a lot of what passes for junk culture and time wasting trivia these days will be considered high art in the future. Future pundits will decry how the youth of the country are wasting their time with the latest feelie dramas and grab-o-vision media instead of partaking of more uplifting fare like downloading _Maru, the box cat_ and staying up all night playing _Tomb Raider_...
See, you're changing the goalposts. I'm talking about TV, you're talking about mass media in general. I'm comparing, say, 1945 and 1965, you're comparing 1810 and 2010. (Or 1610 and 2010.) There are too many confounds and you can't just throw everything since then (wider college education, mass publication) in with television as if they're even remotely the same thing.
I know there are a handful of TV series that constitute legitimate art, and an even rarer handful of those which are even popular. But by and large, TV isn't an improvement to the average person's level of culture or education. It's not necessarily a setback, but it's not an improvement, either.
Go back and read your parent post. The discussion is clearly mass media, or at least the effect of new media on society.
As someone who grew up in the 50s and 60s I can tell you from first hand experience that TV was used massively for education, and that it had a profound effect. Was it used for other things? Things more visible? Sure. Is all TV educational? That's a harder question to answer; note my point about what is considered culture at any given time. Sturgeons Law applies to TV like everything else, so we can't only judge a form by its worse 90%...
As for broading the discussion, which I refute, it's impossible to discuss the effects of one mass communication medium without discussing it within its context. At least not very meaningfully. If you scan around the posts on this page you'll find a post from me making references to the history of reading, writing and printing.
You started the discussion by responding to me, not the other way around. And I was talking specifically about the example of television. I don't think every new media has the same effect on society. If you think otherwise, you need to actually argue that point instead of just handwave it away as an assumption.
You've taken my point ("television failed to fulfill its promise as a source of education and culture for the masses"), ignored it, and instead responded to a straw man ("the aggregate of changes in mass media since the Elizabethan era have not improved the level of education and culture in the general population"). And then when I call you out on it, you tell me "the discussion is clearly about more than television". My point was about television, you can respond to whatever straw men you like but don't pretend it's a response to my point.