This stuff rots your brain

A few months ago I shut off cable because I hardly ever watch TV and since the box is used almost exclusively to show Thomas the Tank Engine and Little Einstein videos, I didn't miss it.
In the last couple weeks, I've flicked on broadcast television to provide background chatter while I eat dinner. And in two out of three times, I've witnessed a murder in the first minute of viewing. The first time was the intro to one of those forensic procedural shows and the hapless victim was out hunting when a grizzly bear attacked, mauling him to death. Of course, since it was a CSI, there was brutal footage of flailing arms and snarling jaws and blood. Then tonight, I just turned it on and there was a agonized woman lying on the carpet, blood stain beneath her with the murderer standing over her in a first-person camera shot. The daughter came running in and I was treated to a gunman's-eye view of her demise, too.
Having avoided TV for so long, I am disgusted. Why do I need to see the up-close view of a human being's excruciating death on prime time? It's our modern-day Colisseum. Sure, nobody is "really dying," but is the effect on the viewer's sensitivity much different than watching the Roman gladiators dismember each other?