Good News: Media giants may darken your TV!

For several years I’ve been among a group of activists encouraging folks to turn off their TVs — at least for TV-Turnoff Week, the third week in April.

With no support from the media (surprise!), it’s been a tough sell.

Now it seems that we have some help from battling media giants. The battle may turn off FOX on the hundreds of thousands of Time Warner cable-connected TV sets.

One of many stories about the struggle is here.

Not surprisingly, the fight is over money. With media, it’s always about money. Ultimately, it’s your money. Think cable subscription costs and the add-on price you pay for advertising.

FOX, the cable content provider, wants Time-Warner, the content delivery corporation, to pay more for Fox’s programming. Dueling full-page ads in the newspapers thinly hide the greed that is behind the industry.

Today’s New York Times ran the vying ads just pages apart.

Here’s FOX’s headline:

“TOMORROW NIGHT
TIME WARNER CABLE
MAY STOP CARRYING
FOX!”

Shocking!

The ad tells viewers they may not be able to see the college bowl game in which Cincinnati plays Florida. Horrors!

Or watch the NFL. A real blow!

Or tune in to “American Idol.” Say it isn’t so!

Faced with such dire threats, says the FOX ad, irate viewers should sign an on-line petition.

My suggestion: Let the screen, on all channels, go to black. Give life a try without televised football and “American Idol." Go out and toss the football with your kids or sing idolized (TV) freedom songs together. "We shall over come...."

Now for the Time Warner ad. This one is laid out like a ransom note from FOX. It is headlined with cut-out, askew, mismatched ransom-note letters:

“PAY OUR PRICE
OR YOU’LL
NEVER SEE
FOX AGAIN”

Get it?

Time Warner’s tag line is “Don’t let FOX hold your TV hostage.”

Consider this. How threatening is the demand and how valuable is the hostage if said hostage is actually stealing your time and money?

Is there another hostage here? Could you be hostage to your own TV addiction?

The fact is that whatever Time Warner and Fox work out as their deal is going to come out of the pockets of cable subscribers like you. Could it be that Time Warner is worried you will actually pull the plug on your cable service if FOX goes missing, or if your rates go up?

Perhaps. Imagine, no more inflated monthly charges in this time of economic hardship. And then there's always the competition from the Internet.

No, this is not a life-and-death hostage situation as Time Warner would have us believe. It is take-it-or-leave-it time for cable television.

So just leave it. And leave FOX and Time Warner to fight over programming that is suddenly worthless because no one is watching.

Here are the dueling web sites:

Time Warner’s www.rolloverorgettough.com
FOX: www.keepfoxon.com

TV-Turnoff's travail

Back in 1994, an organization called TV-Turnoff Network was started to alert the public to the consequences of watching too much TV.

The fallout included (and still includes) obesity, social isolation and depression, lack of exercise, addictive behavior, poor school performance, an acceptance of violence, hyper-consumption, personal debt, eating disorders, and the erosion of family time.

The list went on and on, and new concerns were raised along the way. Pediatricians began telling parents that no child under the age of two should watch any TV — NONE.

Of course the TV/media industry wasn’t having any of that, and responded with “Baby Einstein” and “Baby Mozart.” The DVDs were marketed to suddenly Einstein-fixated parents of children in the very age group the doctors deemed most vulnerable.

Disney (whatever happened to Baby Dumbo?) now owns the “baby prodigy” programs.

TV-Turnoff’s way of fighting back was organizing a week without TV — once a year. The week’s events were arranged around the schools, often by parents. The hope was that families would enjoy their week without TV so much that they’d cut back on viewing once the week was over.

Of course, TV wasn’t the only concern. Other electronic media were working their way into our lives. To meet the new challenge, TV-Turnoff morphed into “The Screen-time Awareness Network.”

When TV-Turnoff began, the average American was putting in four hours a day in front of the tube. Put another way, if the average American lived 75 years, that’s works out to nearly 12.5 years in front of the TV.

Imagine yourself reaching 75 and wondering what you could have done with those 12.5 years of 24 hours days besides watch the tube?

So after 15 years of TV-Turnoff weeks and Screen-Time Awareness, how much time is the average American logging in front of the TV (to say nothing of computer screens).

The answer is: four hours and 49 minutes according to a recent Nielsen reports.

That’s more than a 20 percent increase and an all-time high.

So why have the numbers defied the efforts of TV-Turnoff?

According to one story, “researchers say the continued increase in television consumption can be attributed to several factors including: more television sets in the home; more channels and content to choose from; and greater use of personal video recorders.”

I’ll venture another reason. The message of TV-Turnoff isn’t being disseminated by the media, particularly by TV, the most influential media.

If it isn’t on TV it isn’t part of the culture. In short, we are what we watch, and — surprise, surprise — messages telling us about the harmful consequences of too much TV watching aren’t appearing on our screens.

The TV industry and the advertising industry, its Siamese Twin, rely on maximizing the number of eyeballs viewing ads. The ads propel the profits. The TV and advertising industries, so essential to the consumer economy, certainly don’t want those viewers camping in the mountains, hiking the back-country, reading a good book or visiting with family and friends.

So TV-Turnoff gets no traction. And the time Americans spend with TV goes up and up — even as it takes us down and down.

One organization that is using screens to good advantage to educate students and others is the Media Education Foundation. The organization produces and distributes excellent documentaries about media issues.

For more on the Nielsen audience study, go here. You can find out about TV-Turnoff here, but, sadly, the website seems to be unattended. You can’t even find the dates for the 2010 TV-Turnoff. In the past it has been the third week in April.

An Ode to no TV

In honor of TV-Turnoff Week, which began today, here's ...

TELEVISION
By Roald Dahl

The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set —
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we've been,
We've watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone's place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotised by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink --
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES!
'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'What used the darling ones to do?
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching 'round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it's Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There's Mr. Rate and Mr. Mole-
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks-
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They'll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.
And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen
They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.

Blogging during TV Turn-off week

In response to a post earlier in the week, "ALT" asks whether I should be blogging and whether blog readers should be reading during TV Turn-off Week, which includes being "screen free."

Good question.

Since the computer replaced the typewriter, which replaced the pen, the keyboard/screen has become the dominant writing/publishing tool. So what I am doing, as I gaze at this screen, is writing.

This is not Writing/publishing-Turn-off Week. Nor should it be Reading-Turn-off Week.

The problem isn't screens per se. It's how we use them, and, yes, how MUCH we use them. If I had been fixated on this screen all day, I might have a problem, although many jobs are "screen-centered."

Cut out screens for a week and you lose your job.

My former livelihood as a journalist was screen-dependent, but no longer, ever since I became semi-retired. Still, the screen has its allure. I've taken steps to control my use of it.

Literally steps.

Since starting the 10,000-steps program recently, I've extracted myself from my screen-perch. My pedometer calls me the way the computer once did. The little step-counter clipped to my belt tells me that I'm actually averaging 12,000 steps or six miles of walking a day.

I have no idea whether I could do that after an eight-hour, five-days-a-week job, but it seems entirely possible. I find that with normal walking and then a planned one-hour walk (early in the morning, at lunch, in the evening), I can hit my 10,000-steps goal. Where to find that one hour?

That's where TV-Turnoff comes in — not just this week but every week.

(Sodden after-thought: you can have it ALL — if you insist — by buying a treadmill and putting a TV in front of it.)

As for writing, researching and staying informed, I'll keep using this little tool they call a computer.

Happy TV-Turnoff Week!

This from the on-line newsletter of Rieke Elementary School's PTA:

SCREEN FREE WEEK IS HERE! April 21-27.

Click. Click. Click. That's the sound of televisions and other screens being turned off in our neighborhoods for Screen Free Week!

Reasons for turning off the screens:

1. Obesity: television watching is basically a sedentary activity, which is frequently accompanied by mindless snacking, which leads to obesity.

2. Advertising: TV programming, even "educational" programming, exists to sell you stuff.

3. Violence: the entertainment industry's criteria for what level of violence is appropriate for what age group has changed radically in the last 30 years. Youth, who are exposed to TV and video game violence increasingly accept the use of violence to solve problems.

4. Brain Development: TV is a passive activity, and there is some evidence that watching too much TV, or even any, at an early age, permanently alters the brain, thus shortening attention spans.

5. Imagination: TV and screens hinder the development of imagination. The absence of images requires a child to use his or her imagination to create the image. The greater a child's imagination is, the greater his or her ability to understand abstract concepts and develop imaginative solutions later in life.

6. Time: television and computer games can take up an enormous amount of a child's time. American children watch nearly three hours of TV everyday, time they might have spent playing with friends, reading, exercising, or creating.

So, turn off the TV, DVDs, video games, and computers (except for looking up something for reference, or for homework), and find different things to do! Enjoy the extra time you will have, and have a great week!

For more, visit TV-Turnoff. org