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Turn Off? Tune Out? Drop Dead!
April 23, 2008
Since we're in the TV business, it's doubtful you know this week is TV Turnoff Week. And if you knew, you probably have the same visceral reaction about TV Turnoff Week as a KFC executive would have upon hearing about a visit from PETA.
How do I know about TV Turnoff Week? I heard about it on the radio. You can cut the irony with a rabbit ear antenna.
Irony aside, the whole idea of turning off your TV for a week is beyond absurd on a more levels than the set of "Deal or No Deal."
Before we get to the absurdity, where does this TV Turnoff idea come from?
TV Turnoff Week is brought to you by the Center for Screen-Time Awareness (CSTA), formerly the TV-Turnoff Network. Founded in 1994, CSTA describes itself as a "nonprofit organization that provides tools for people to live healthier lives in functional families in vibrant communities by taking control of the electronic media in their lives and not allowing it to control them."
A laudable goal. I do hate it when my iPhone makes me scrub the toilet.
But seriously, CSTA's Luddite cure is worse than the disease. Let's end global warming by having everyone walk to work for a week. We can eliminate society's sick addiction to celebrity gossip with a week-long boycott of InTouch. We'll get hit men to stop whacking by banning the sale of garroting piano wire for a week.
Turning off your TV for a week in today's world is not only a useless "Just Say No" exercise but could be deemed unpatriotic. We are immersed in one of the most important and exciting election cycles in decades. Democracy relies on an informed electorate. It'd be practically un-Constitutional to turn off the TV this week. Did you ever try to listen to election returns on the radio? Holy Calvin Coolidge, Batman!
Of course, you could turn off the TV and keep track of current events on your PC. Then take a break from your flag pin news fix and click to ESPN.com for today's Web Gems. Then to Jib Jab to put yourself in the Farting Birthday: Office Edition birthday video. Then to You Tube to watch a time-lapse video of a guy stranded in an elevator for 40 hours.
Sort of like going on a diet and replacing Twinkies with Ho Hos.
TV is a tool. It is not in itself evil. It can't force you to do anything. True, technology is not objective. It can and does change behavior. But technology means progress, progress means change and change means adaptation. The genie of TV long ago escaped from its bottle, and like Barbara Eden, it has no intention of returning to it. And, like Larry Hagman, we have to learn to live with its oft-times annoying presence.
There are lots of threats to our society, such as apathy, laziness and stupidity — like an organization that promotes a return to a pre-TV world. Instead of focusing its energy on getting us not to watch TV, why don't these folks figure out a way of turning TV into something worth watching?
As Edward R. Murrow once famously said about TV, "This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire, but it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box."
But it can't do anything except save on the electric bill if you turn it off.
Posted by Stewart Wolpin on April 23, 2008 | Comments (2)
