Voices: Ridding Ourselves of the Boob Tube

If you're an "average" viewer, TV Turnoff Week (through April 28) will give you 24 extra hours to live.

That's like having the one extra day a week we so often wish for in our Sisyphus-like attempts to attend to the demands of life.

I've never had the guts to measure how much TV my family watches because I'm sure that we, like most Americans, take in too much. But measure? I couldn't possibly. I've been in denial since college, since I read former advertising executive Jerry Mander's landmark book "The Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television."

"Television inhibits your ability to think," Mander wrote, "but it does not lead to freedom of mind, relaxation or renewal. It leads to a more exhausted mind. You may have time out from prior obsessive thought patterns, but that's as far as television goes. The mind is never empty, the mind is filled. What's worse, it is filled with someone else's obsessive thoughts and images."

Television programming, indeed! I was terrified. What was I letting them do to my mind. Here I was, studying theatre in order to become a playwright, an artist consciously creating new images. Dramatically, I decided that I had to give up television.

Ten years later, I still haven't found the strength to turn the set off permanently - networks such as Bravo, Oxygen, and Trio have challenged the order of trivial content and the brilliant Alan Ball created "Six Feet Under." I am a conscientious viewer now, I profess. The set may be on, I defend, but we don't really pay all that much attention.

It's been estimated by Adbusters, the organization which launched TV Turnoff Week in 1994, that millions of people in over 25 countries around the world have left their screens blank this week in consideration of who's been shaping the way they think. My family is attempting to be among them. It's going to be a long seven days without Pepper Ann in the morning and the Powerpuff Girls at night. I'm not certain that we're going to make it, but we've decided to try.

Experimenting, I've turned off the TV that no one was watching just to see if the children's voices booming from the next room would be quite so loud without the "background noise." The results were astonishing and immediate. Not only did their volume noticeably decrease, but their attitudes mellowed. There was less bickering and less whining. Now this is hardly a scientific study, I know, but I realized that further investigation was warranted. I now make an extra effort to turn off the TV when no one's watching. Even if it gets turned right back on, at least there's a chance that we'll break away long enough to find something more constructive to do. Something better for our minds and our souls.

It's not too late to join the experiment. Just try going through a weekend without the distraction of the tube. Take care of a few of those simple little things that you've been avoiding. Get some exercise. Read beyond the headlines or better yet, read a book. Experience real live culture. Throw a dinner party or catch up with friends. Write a letter. Paint a picture. Take a walk and see what's going on in your own zip code.

And once freed to think for itself again, perhaps your mind will wake to an epiphany. Isn't it worth finding out?

For every program as challenging and intelligent as HBO's quirky "Six Feet Unde"r there are far too many socially incriminating programs such as ABC's latest reality dating show, "The Bachelor." Even if you bring yourself to find 25 women competing to win a marriage proposal from a 31-year-old management consultant entertaining, it is still exploitative and degrading. Eight million people tuned in to the series premiere episode on March 25.

Collectively, that's eight million hours of time. Eight million hours of life that Americans could have used... oh I don't know volunteering, for example? People who don't volunteer frequently blame a lack of time. Is it just a coincidence that National Volunteer Week coincides with TV Turn off Week? Perhaps. But perhaps it's a coincidence worth thought.

-- alicia grega-pikul, 25 April 2002