Is television trivial? Is television good for we viewers? Or can it seriously damage the mental health of the nation? These aren't the sort of questions that spring to mind as we sit down to the TV dinner on the small screen every night or lather up with our middaily soap or sitcom. But much paper and many words are expended by those concerned with answers to this $64,000 question.

There are fifty years of tests, trials, research and government reports and papers worldwide testifying to interest in the health of the patient. Some worry about the effects of violence, children's advertising and the social value of programs and the way they interact with our society and culture. The one billion dollars the government spends on television each year - the bulk going to the government broadcasters - shows even the chief surgeon has decided television is more than just a box in the corner of the room. Of course, the five billion dollar local commercial industry - now rapidly expanding with pay television - can only agree with the diagnosis.

That television is important is the only thing the different interests involved can agree on. Whether it affects the way we viewers behave and just how it affects us are difficult questions to answer. You could say local advertisers wouldn't spend $2.3 billion on television if it didn't change the way we did things. But symptoms have been hard to isolate from other influences so most results have been vague and no substantial effect has yet been proven.

One fresh approach is to examine life before and after television. On the remote volcanic island of St Helena in the South Atlantic 5,000 lucky residents recently became recipients of television for the very first time via satellite. Over four years researchers will study "the effects" of television on young children unfamiliar with televisual culture. In Europe others are assessing the language use of teenagers who watch Australian soaps - our unique colloquial expressions easy to trace if they infect a local foreign tongue.

Just in case there's a chance of catching anything, government regulators check our social pulse for the presence of alcohol and drug ads, the level of local content and children's programming on our screens, what can go on and when and who actually makes the money and pulls the strings. The ABC and SBS are then prescribed as a cultural vitamin to "balance" the commercial television services.

One local doctor has even prescribed a Family Channel laxative to purge our television system after a bout of Hollywood-style excess. I feel better already...