Football, the Unifier

Football is again the buzzword. Tonight's the match between Singapore and Thailand.

Last week, when Singapore played against Malaysia, and won, the national spirit and unity roared as we cheered our team, within the National Stadium and outside, in our homes and in the fields. Tonight, that football can unite our people into One People is evident again. It certainly does when mother (who usually complains about father watching footbal "as always", "watching them kick the ball") stays glued to the TV throughout dinner, asking intensely which colour represented which team!

Well, Singapore has won 2-1. This is really a grand finale to the National Stadium!

They say sports unite peoples. That's the aim of the Olympics when it first started (in Athens?). Let's hope football does too (though from the looks of the game tonight, the outlook isn't too rosy).

Isolated amidst a sea of People

"All alone in a crowd" is a very apt headline for the recent commentary by Ivan Png. Families gathering in front of a TV is becoming a less common sight. Especially if the children are old enough (or young enough) to hit the keyboard and activate programmes on the computer. Families together with one pastime (ie watching the same TV programme) are also becoming a less common sight because there is now cable TV offering a myriad of programmes, from AXN to CNN, BBC, Disney, Hallmark, Discovery and Hongkong/Chinese channels. With TVs in almost every room in some households, each is watching his own niched TV programmes, in short, narrowcasting.

"All alone in a crowd" also reminds me of the Samsung MP3 TV commercial. In the TVC, everyone is walking around with a "glass bubble" around his / her head. One guy bravely breaks his own "bubble", signifying the Samsung MP3 player with the built-in speaker (instead of the customary earpieces in order to listen to the music). The people around him also break their own "bubbles" and start using the MP3 advertising, all SHARING and re-gaining common space.

I guess we are indeed often in our own personal "bubble", whether when working at our PC/laptop, in texting our friends through the mobile phone (even while physically in a group with others), or in surfing the Net, or engaging in exciting gaming. Or when blogging. ;) But even while we are alone with our thoughts, we can say that we are also communicating with others - those we lan-game with, those we email.

Ultimately, like in eating and with food, it is a matter of balance. We need our own space; we also need to engage with and interact with other human beings, especially family and friends, who help feed our souls with encouragement, love and friendship.

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Straits Times Tuesday, 30 Jan 07 Pg 18
All alone in a crowd

By For The Straits Times, Ivan Png

IN HIS highly acclaimed book, Bowling Alone, political scientist Robert Putnam documented a systematic decline in membership of civic, social and fraternal groups in the US.
The former dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University famously observed that even as bowling increased in popularity, people were tending to bowl alone rather than in groups.
Mr Putnam used membership in civic, social and fraternal groups to measure social capital. Social capital provides the foundation for society, in the same way that economic and human capital provide the foundation of the economy.
He attributed the reduction in social interaction and consequent decline of social capital to various factors. In particular, he blamed the fall in social interaction on the rise of television and the geographic spread of the population, which in turn reduced the overall density of living.
In recent months, several economists have tested Mr Putnam's arguments with statistical data from the United States and Indonesia. These studies have important implications for the socio-political development of our region.
A study by academic Benjamin Olken has confirmed Mr Putnam's argument that television viewing reduces social interaction.
Mr Olken, a junior fellow at Harvard, was recently featured in the New York Times' list of top young economists. He studied the impact of television on social capital in rural Java.
Television reception varies across villages in rural Java. Depending on the terrain and location of transmission towers, some villages receive more channels than others.
Mr Olken found that for each additional television channel received, villagers spent 5 per cent more time on television and radio and attended 11 per cent fewer group meetings. Also, the number of social groups in a village was reduced by 7 per cent for every additional channel that it received.
The 21st-century equivalent of TV is the Internet. Gamers - young and not-so-young - are sequestering themselves to feed their addictions. We are not only losing social interaction, we are even losing family interaction. In past years, parents and children would gather and watch television as a family. Today, each one is closeted alone with a separate computer.
Another study, by Jan K.Brueckner of the University of California, Irvine, and Ann G.Largey of Dublin City University, contradicted Mr Putnam's argument that social interaction is higher where the population is denser.
The duo studied the impact of population density on various measures of friendship and group involvement. These measures were collected by the Social Capital Benchmark Survey which, ironically, was initiated by Mr Putnam himself.
The survey collected data on social capital from a sample of more than 30,000 Americans. It was found that where population density was higher, various measures of friendship were lower. These measures included the numbers of confidants and close friends, and the rates of socialisation with neighbours and visits of friends to the home.
The study also found that where population density was higher, various measures of involvement in group activities were lower. These measures included membership in hobby-oriented clubs and formal non-church groups, and attendance at club meetings.
While they contradict Mr Putnam's hypothesis, these findings certainly do resonate with recent experience. As Asian societies have urbanised - through migration and economic development - the spirit of gotong royong (mutual help) has clearly diminished. This is quite obvious to anyone who has seen the litter and scrawl that mar our housing estates.
As entertainment becomes ever more 'personalised' and urbanisation proceeds apace, social interaction will continue to diminish across Asia - in rich and poor countries alike. In terms of social capital, the future does look bleak indeed.

The writer is a professor of information systems, business policy, and economics at the National University of Singapore. The opinions expressed here are personal.

Oleh, Oleh, Oleh, Oleh ... in cyberspace

Even as the people crammed into the National Stadium for the last game last night, united as one spirit (hmm, maybe "united as one" sounds better), the same unity is fostered in virtual space.

It seems that STOMP was abuzz with comments on the football game too. Well, if you can't join them at the stadium, join them in spirit in cyberspace!

So perhaps football is a unifying force even in cyberspace?

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The Sunday Times, Jan 28, 2007
STOMP users add to football mania

FOOTBALL fever is well and truly back in Singapore.
Just as the National Stadium was packed with 55,000 fans cheering on the Lions yesterday, Internet chatrooms here were also buzzing.

The Straits Times' interactive portal, Stomp, had more than 50 comments, with fans discussing Singapore's penalty shootout win over rivals Malaysia.
Said Sengleng: 'Our team had put everything on the line for this. Hope they can do the same for the finals. Let the world know our soccer team is not a failure.'
Added Spleenboy: 'Wow! I never really enjoyed soccer but I sure am proud of our team.'

You can also join in the discussion at http://www.stomp.com.sg/

Oleh, Oleh, Oleh, Oleh ...and ... So long, Farewell ...

The buzzword last night was football. Even I, a diehard non-football fan, knows it. For the first thing my family did on returning home from dinner was - "turn on the TV".

It was the game between Singapore and Malaysia. And the last game in our National Stadium. For our grand olde dame is making way for a new stadium.

Though the game was not the English League, there were comments aplenty among the audience. Especially about the comments of the TV commentator as heard over TV...

For years, we have talked about uniting the people - with the Singapore Wave (like at the National Day Parade when Gurmit Singh shouts enthusiastically to us in the audience to stand up and wave wildly), with the Singapore Songs (which the students sing in school during the National Day period), and with the Singapore food (hence our Food Festival and everything food, even in stately museums, and Singaporean gatherings overseas). Well now it's confirmed - football unites us all too!
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The Sunday Times, Jan 28, 2007
Fans pack stadium to cheer Lions in last game there against Malaysia
By Alvin Foo

NEVER mind the rain or the heavy traffic.
Forget about the English FA Cup, too.
And so what if last night's Asean Championship semi-final second leg between Singapore and Malaysia was shown live on cable television.
For 55,000 fans, the place to be was the National Stadium, home of Singapore football.
They packed the stadium, shoulder to shoulder. It was a sight not witnessed since 2005, when another full house gathered to see Singapore lift the Tiger Cup, now called the Asean Championship.
The game also attracted several first-time fans, such as teacher Tammy Seah, 23.
She said: 'I came because this could be the last match between rivals Singapore and Malaysia before the stadium is torn down this year.'
But, unlike two years ago when the Lions strolled to victory with an early goal, last night's encounter went right to the wire.
The fans rode the gamut of emotions. And they enjoyed every minute of it.
Some, like housewife Yana Lee, 36, had come four hours before kick-off to beat the crowd.
Tailor Abdul Mubarak, 50, even shut his shop early.
He said: 'Rain or shine, I won't want to miss this. I'm not interested in Thailand or Indonesia. With Malaysia, it's a different story.'
Even some hard-core English Premiership fans could not resist the long-time Singapore-Malaysia rivalry.
Said student Ng Hongsheng, 16, a Manchester United fan: 'Even if United were playing at the same time, I would still be at Kallang.'
Families with toddlers in tow, school kids on a weekend outing and couples on a football date helped turn the arena into a sea of red 30 minutes before the match kicked off at 8pm.
They were joined by 2,000-odd Malaysian fans, who made their presence felt with flags and lusty cheers.
Said contractor Mohd Nasir, 51, who travelled from Kuala Lumpur: 'We've come from Perak, Kelantan and some even from Sarawak. It's a special occasion, well worth the long travel.'
All tickets were snapped up by 3pm, leaving hundreds of fans stranded.
By 7pm, a long line of cars formed on the roads leading to the stadium. This was compounded by Taiwanese pop group S.H.E having a concert next door at the Indoor Stadium.
At kick-off, the Kallang whimper, which had graced the earlier games, grew into a thunderous ovation. The Kallang Roar was back. So, too, the Kallang Wave.
But the fans were stunned into silence when Malaysia opened the scoring after 57 minutes.
They found their voices again only after Muhammad Ridhuan equalised.
From then on, the fans were kept on the edge of their seats as the game spilled first into extra-time and then to penalties.
Each Singapore spot-kick was accompanied by loud cheers. They jeered each time a Malaysian player stepped up.
The fans' joy was complete when Lionel Lewis' penalty save put Singapore into the final.
Yet, not all fans were impressed.
Said civil servant Julia Chan, 26: 'We were crap. Luckily, the other team were worse.'
No matter. The fans knew they were the 12th man for the Lions.
Agreeing, Football Association of Singapore president Ho Peng Kee said: 'Their presence made the difference.'
alfoo@sph.com.sg

Ka fei please

Please give me the coffee that's unique to this place. No homogenous, commercial coffee from global (usually American) giants please!

I can understand the sentiments of the Chinese. Starbucks in Beijing? And in the sacred palace grounds of centuries of Emperors?! What encroachment of grand history! Is this commercial "invasion", slowly eating away at the customs unique to the place, akin to the destruction of the Summer Palace? ...

Progress? Does having Starbucks, MacDonald's, KFC etc mean progress? Does having it available for one's citizens to try on home ground mean progress? If so, then why not plant them in the areas with struggling economies and hey presto, there's progress?

The streets of Beijing, and especially Shanghai, are dotted at regular intervals with the familiar sights of MacDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut; along shopping belts with Giodanno, Bossini, and the likes. While welcome comfort food (and familiar shopping spots) for those used to them, still, hey, don't we travel to find out more and to see sights unique to the country or city we travel to? If all we want are what we have at home, why pay expensive airfare (and take leave) to seek out the same overseas?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ More

Straits Times, Sat Jan 27, 2007
Wake up and smell the coffee
By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES - THE Americans declare war on terror; the Chinese declare war on Starbucks.This is not to suggest that America, for all its faults, is the more serious nation - but actually, maybe it is. I mean, just how silly can China get?'Starbucks May Be 'Forbidden' at China Palace Museum'.
Such was the headline on the astonishing Reuters story out of Beijing. In it, we were told the Chinese authorities were training their official censorious guns on a Starbucks retail shop nestled subversively in Beijing's famed Forbidden City compound.The worry is that the very grinding presence of this brewing branch of the multinational coffee-house chain is an insult to down-home, homegrown, true-red Chinese culture.But is it? Yes, you bet it is. Heck, it doesn't take an Albert Einstein, an anti-space satellite rocket scientist, or the se-cond coming of Deng Xiaoping to know what's happening.
In truth, any Starbucks is a kind of unintended insult to any local culture - everywhere, period.
Starbucks infests the planet like corporate locusts that quietly but steadily eat away at local cultural foliage.A Starbucks is as much a slick symbol of the homogenising powers of mass-produced multinational consumer products, as is a glossy new characterless vehicle designed coldly in one country by a hardhearted committee of focus-group- type fuss-budgets, and then thrown together in another, drawing on car parts from all over.
You see, economic globalisation doesn't give us culture. It gives us profits - albeit probably not properly distributed along all economic and social lines. Globalisation doesn't enhance local cultures; it competes with them, sometimes grinding them into dust.Consider the travel experience of today. Once you have toured widely enough, you see so many Guccis, Diors, KFCs, McDonald's and so on that you sometimes forget where you have been.
You perhaps even start to wonder if there remains any indigenous, defining and unique centre anywhere in the world.But this retail homogenisation is the price of globalisation, and there is no antidote, even for the properly perfervid preservers of the China Palace Museum.No, there is none at all available. That is, unless you want to go the route of North Korea by declaring yourself a hermit state chock-a-block with self-reliance, seal off the borders, turn off the lights, and slowly but surely eat away at yourself until there's nothing left.Okay, so that doesn't work.
What's the alternative? It looks as if there's only one: It's the Big Mac of globalisation, like it or not!China's Starbucks scare reminds me of the time about 200 years ago that the Luddites in northern England railed furiously against the menacing process of industrialisation in the northern counties of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. The movement that was to mash newfangled machines and torch factories was at the same time both noble and ill-fated.
Progress does not always improve things but opposing progress is a losers' game in today's world.But that's exactly what mainland Chinese personality Rui Chenggang is proposing. And he's attracting a lot of attention, not just because he's a demagogue, but he's a media demagogue, like our very own Lou Dobbs. They both rail against globalisation. Dobbs does his Luddite thing on CNN, Rui on CCTV9, the Chinese state-owned channel.Except for possibly us Americans, the Chinese today take second place to nobody as the world's most unapologetic materialists. Even their former brand of Communism, however neglected these days as an economic guidebook, was designed for the material man. Put on top of that the current, trendy 'to-be-rich-is-to-be-glorious' anthem of contemporary Chinese material women, and you have one of the most profoundly materialistic societies ever.
To try to tame the tsunami-like wave of material globalisation by lashing out at one silly little stupid Starbucks would strike any rational observer as a gesture too little, too late.
The Chinese authorities must understand that, having made the epochal decision in the 1990s to cross the Rubicon and enter the World Trade Organisation, there is no turning back now.Dear Beijing: It's much too late to return to that old-time religion, a peasant-based Communism that worships equity over wealth. Yes, your museum is a treasure, but those days of immaculate preservation are long gone. Wake up and smell the coffee!

The writer, a veteran US journalist, is a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy.
Copyright: Tom Plate

simple pleasures, simple leisure

**A "discovery" on a Sunday morning - the orchid shows signs of flowering again! After a hiatus of a year or more! :D










**Koi swimming together on a leisurely afternoon. Co-existing peacefully with the sucker fish.

scenes around SG - Bottle Tree Park

When I came across this, I thought it was a travel piece. Didn't realise that it's right here in Singapore, in our very own Yishun!SERENE SANCTUARY: The 7ha park boasts a pond and kampung-style buildings. -- LAU FOOK KONG

Sunday Times, Jan 21, 2007

Bottled haven

Relax - kampung style - at the new Bottle Tree Park, and enjoy Australian flora like Grasstrees and Bottle Trees

By Ng Nur Lydia & Sarah Ong

TAKING centrestage amid lush grounds, four gargantuan green sentries cast an eye over human visitors. No, these are not Ents, the wise old trees from Peter Jackson's The Lords Of The Rings trilogy, but a unique quartet from Down Under called Bottle Trees. Located in a 7ha arcadia - leased for eight years - in Lorong Chencharu near Khatib MRT Station in Yishun, they are the centrepiece of Bottle Tree Park, a unique leisure entertainment concept developed by Bottle Tree Pte Ltd. The trees, which cost $30,000 each, can grow up to 12m tall and 6m in circumference. The food and event-organising company has another similar establishment, Bottle Tree Village in Sembawang, but that covers about 1ha, has only a seafood restaurant and is mainly frequented by foodies. Since the park opened five weeks ago, it has drawn more than 2,000 people despite the continual heavy downpour. 'People still come and hide under shelters when it rains,' says business development manager Wendy Loh. This is hardly surprising as admission to the park is free and visitors can view exotic flora native to Australia, such as the Grasstree, a spiked flowering tree, and the Macrozamia moorei, a palm with long, keeled leaves. An old-world Singapore flavour can also be seen in little accents like a buffalo cart and thatched huts. Other attractions include a 50-table Chinese seafood restaurant, fishing and prawning for adults and a small pond for children to fish. A 3,000 sqm patch of land has also been set aside for those who want to try growing vegetables. Altogether, more than $300,000 were spent on the plants, and $3 million on the whole park. Other facilities to be ready in the next six months are a mini-zoo, basketball and volleyball courts and an obstacle course, says Ms Loh. While weekends are expectedly more crowded with families, the place has become a quiet haven on weekdays for fishing enthusiasts who set up their gear early and spend the entire day there. One such patron, retiree and avid angler T. H. Leong, 69, says: 'I usually come at 8am with my fishing buddies and stay till 5pm. It is a good place to fish.' lydng@sph.com.sg sarahong@sph.com.sg 5 things to do Fishing - 8am to 5pm; $35 for a full day Prawning - 8am to 5pm; $14.50 per hour (Rod provided) Longkang fishing - 8am to 5pm; $10 per hour (Net provided) Vegetable farming - From $10; (dependent on vegetable type) Chinese Seafood Restaurant - 11am to 11pm; Reservation required; Tel: 6759-7077 Getting there Bottle Tree Park 81 Lorong Chencharu MRT: Take the north-bound train and alight at Khatib MRT station. It's a 15-minute walk to Bottle Tree Park's side entrance opposite Yishun Stadium. Car: Exit from SLE (Yishun). From Lentor Avenue, turn left into Yishun Avenue 1. At the traffic light, turn left towards Sembawang Road. Keep right, then turn into Lorong Chencharu. Enter opposite Sembawang Country Club and Airbase. Bus: Alight at Yishun Avenue 2, opposite Yishun Stadium. Services 39, 81, 851, 852, 853, 854, 855, 857, 858, 965 and 969 stop there.

the Fine City at the Equator, and the Ban City further down under

Neil Humphreys on ...

S'pore's 'fine', Australia's 'banned'

It all started one hot and hazy Tuesday afternoon

TODAY Weekend • January 20, 2007

Singapore is a fine city. That's what the tourist T-shirt says.

Drop litter. Fine. Spit on the floor. Fine. Stick chewing gum on the MRT doors. Fine. Act like a tech geek. Fine. Blast cheesy, retro 80s music from your car radio. Fine.

Okay, the last two are not offences but they should be.

Singapore, according to persistent stereotypes, is the city of fines.

But I'm not so sure.

Australia's state of Victoria — the home of Kylie Minogue and The Wiggles — could be about to seize that crown.

Victoria is becoming a "ban" state. It all started on Tuesday at 4.05pm. Precisely. That moment when civilised life crashed to a temporary halt. A big bang came from the bedroom. No, not that kind of big bang; this is a family newspaper. We were sitting in the living room when the TV, the fan and the lights all went off abruptly. It was a real crisis. We couldn't get the TV back on.

This was serious. We had no electricity in the house, the food in the fridge was melting in the searing heat and I was genuinely concerned that the power supply would not return in time for me to record the Premiership highlights show. The temperature outside was 40 degrees with a haze caused by the bush fires that raged across Victoria. And we were sitting in a sweat box.

"What are we going to do? This is terrible," my wife said. "I know. Maybe we can ask the neighbours to tape the EPL show." I went outside to check the fuse box and found my next-door neighbour doing the same. "Oh, yours has gone too, has it, Neil?" he asked chirpily. "Yeah, total blackout." "Oh, good. That means it's not just my house. It's probably the whole street. That's okay, then. See ya!"

But it wasn't just our street. It was everywhere. As we drove towards town, we encountered a surreal, almost apocalyptic world. None of the traffic lights worked, causing major jams, and the malls were all gloomy. As we passed each shop, dazed customers shuffled out onto the street from every darkened nook and cranny. I kept waiting for Michael Jackson to pop up in a red leather suit and shout: "Cos this is Thriller!"

When I reached the office, I discovered it was a statewide catastrophe. A bushfire in northern Victoria had damaged one of the state's major electricity lines. Extreme demand from air-conditioning units (take note, Singapore) caused an overload that wiped out most of Melbourne and the state. People were trapped in lifts, on trains and trams and, worst of all, some residents missed the TV soap operas Home and Away and Neighbours. The power supply was restored within a couple of hours but with no guarantee that it wouldn't happen again soon.

So, the Victorian state government has come up with a fool-proof proposal: A statewide ban on residential air-conditioning. Now, firstly, how would such a ban possibly be enforced? Would a van drive around and listen out for rattling noises? Imagine that knock on the door on a Friday night. "Hello, sir. I'm from the Air-con Surveillance Squad. I'm the ASS man. We've stood outside your bedroom for half-an-hour and detected some rhythmic rattling. Could you explain it?" "Yes, my wife and I are trying to cash in on those baby-making incentives. Now, bugger off."

And, secondly, can you imagine working in an enclosed environment as temperatures top 40 degrees without air-conditioning? Singapore might be a fine city but it's also a humid one, so don't even think about messing with their air-con. Conversations across the island would end abruptly. "Hey, Singapore whacked Laos 11-0 this week." "Heck care, lah." "Thaksin been in Singapore to see his kakis and tekan the Thai gahmen." "Heck care, lah." "And the Gahmen gonna ban our air-con." "What? No air-con? Right, that's it. Get me a permit and a beer crate. We're off to Speaker's Corner!"

Like Singapore, Australia has endured a bit of a battering from Mother Nature this year and the bans have resulted. No wet season. Hosepipe ban. No rain. Car-washing ban. Drought. Complete ban of water usage outdoors. Damaged power lines. Air-con ban.

So, for a little revenge, you know what to do the next time you go Down Under. Wear an "Australia is a 'ban' city" T-shirt.

TV yesterday; archaic today; Heritage tomorrow

Our Panasonic TV went out of service recently. We went to look for a replacement. When we reached the store, lo and behold, there wasn't a single cathode ray tube TV in sight!

It seems that CRT TVs are no longer on sale, at least at the Courts store we went to. Just some months back last year, we had bought a big CRT TV for quite a good price (we thought, still using the price benchmark of old).

So we got an LCD TV. And now we're advised to change the cable decoder for better and sharper resolution.

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The prediction made last year ...

Cathode-Ray-Tube TV Format Dying Slow, Quiet Death

Monday , October 23, 2006 (Fox News, off )

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. —

The lone conventional television set at Anderson's TV store sat along a side wall like a castoff. Its screen was dark as dozens of other gleaming flat-panel and big-screen models flashed nearby with vivid color images.

The staff at the Redwood City store hadn't even bothered to turn on the cathode-ray tube TV until a reporter asked to see it on a recent afternoon.

The obvious neglect reflected the wallflower status of today's CRT TVs, as well as the mature technology's doomed future. Experts say the old-fashioned boob tube that catered to generations of Americans will soon be all but extinct.

"It's already dead, but it doesn't know it yet," said Jon Paul Belstler, an audio/video consultant at Anderson's. "It's just trying to hang on."

Across stores and in homes, sleek LCD and plasma televisions are taking over.

In North America, sales of the bulky traditional TVs are in steep decline.

By next year, the tube TV will cede its crown of dominance to LCD sets for the first time, according to the market research firm iSuppli Corp.

Sales of CRTs will fall from an estimated 14.4 million units this year to 10.4 million in 2007, while sales of LCD TVs are predicted to rise from 10.9 million units to 17.8 million.

By 2010, iSuppli predicts CRTs will account for only 2.1 million of the 44 million televisions sold.

The decline comes despite the venerable CRT's bargain prices: $223, on average, compared with $1,007 for LCD or $2,335 for plasma, according to research firm DisplaySearch.

But consumers are increasingly enamored with the thin designs and stunningly sharp pictures available with newer sets.

And high-end, large-sized CRT TVs are already running close in price to similarly sized LCDs. The solitary tube TV at Anderson's was a 34-inch Sony WEGA HDTV model going for $999. At Amazon.com, you could find special deals for a 32-inch LCD HDTV for the same price.

"CRTs are just losing their buzz when you have competing TVs that have technology that's similar to the CRT for almost the same price," iSuppli analyst Riddhi Patel said.

LCD prices have fallen precipitously — about 30 percent annually since 2003, according to DisplaySearch — narrowing the price gap to CRT TVs.

David Barnes, an analyst at DisplaySearch, expects a consumer will be able to find a 32-inch LCD TV for $500 by Christmas 2007.

"Sure you could buy a CRT at that point, but why?" Barnes said.

Besides, Americans love big TVs if they can handle it in budget and space.

The main draw of flat-panel displays is that they can be the size of an oven door or bigger without hogging the depth of, well, an oven. Even models in the 60-inch range are only a few inches thick and can be mounted like paintings.

By contrast, the largest CRTs left on the market are 36-inch models that rival washing machines in heft.

Anything bigger proved too bulky for consumers' tastes, said Ali Atash, a senior marketing manager at Samsung Electronics Co., which introduced a short-lived 40-inch tube TV years ago.

Samsung has since developed slimmer CRT TVs, trying to capitalize on the lingering albeit dwindling demand for conventional sets.

With the company's "SlimFit" technology, a 20-inch TV that previously stretched back 24 inches is now only 13 inches deep.

Retailers expect little to no demand for CRTs by 2009, partly because of a government-imposed deadline requiring television broadcasts nationwide to switch to all-digital by February of that year.

Industry observers predict many consumers will have purchased a digital TV by then.

Digital CRT sets sold today are capable of handling high-definition TV, and video experts say CRT technology still represents the gold standard in picture quality with the deepest blacks and best color accuracy.

But the performance of LCD and plasma displays have improved dramatically in just the past two years, making the differences in picture quality insignificant to all but discerning videophiles.

Major TV makers like Sony Corp. (SNE) and LG Electronics Co. have been steadily reducing their CRT shipments to focus on what will soon be the larger flat-panel TV market.

LG, in fact, had followed Samsung in creating slimmer versions of CRTs two years ago but is no longer pushing the technology. Only two CRT models remain in LG's lineup of 50 televisions this year, spokesman John Taylor said.

"We saw the writing on the wall years ago, and flat panels have taken off much faster than a lot of people have expected," Taylor said.

At a Video Only store in San Francisco, only about three in 20 TVs currently sold are CRTs, store manager William Arias said.

Unlike Anderson's, which now devotes most of its showroom to the CRT's modern-day counterparts, Video Only still keeps about two dozen conventional sets on display.

"There are people who aren't ready to spend $1,000 on a TV yet," Arias said. "And lots of people still have big built-in TV cabinets. We tell them, that since saving space isn't an issue, they could still go with a CRT."

Circuit City Stores Inc. (CC), the nation's second-largest electronics retailer, plans to have very few CRT models in its stores by the end of 2007.

No. 1 electronics retailer Best Buy Co. Inc. (BBY) hasn't declared a blackout on CRTs but is steadily devoting less retail space because more consumers are looking for flat panels.

"The CRT has served us well for many many years — since the early 1930s into the golden age of television and the advent of color in the 60s," said LG's Taylor. "The longevity of that technology is probably second to none in our industry, but time marches on, and flat panels have really captured the enthusiasm of the American public."

Hide and Seek with the Sun