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   Tuesday, May 02, 2006

   THE IDIOT BOX

When I used to work at Britnell's Bookshop, Toronto's oldest and fanciest-schmanciest, I would often tell people buying a book that I'd heard the author would be on Talk Show X that week or that PBS was doing a televised version. They'd look at me like I had something hanging out of my nose and say, "I don't watch television," or better yet, "I don't own a television."

I always found this attitude strange since -- like books, movies or any other media -- 80% of television is indeed crap but some of it is very, very good. Some may think my 80% figure is too kind but even so, why dismiss an entire outlet when you can just be selective about it?

James Poniewozik, the TV critic for Time magazine agrees with me but far more authoritatively:

It's easy to knock the TV Turnoff Network as Quixotes, Luddites and naifs -- I've taken my own shots at them in the past -- but here's their dirty secret: they don't actually want you to turn off your TV. Not for good anyway. In a chat on the Washington Post web site, the group's director allowed that what they really want is for families to spend fewer hours in front of the tube: 1 or 2 hours per day, perhaps.

You can argue with the number (OK smart guys: America's Next Top Model, The Amazing Race, Lost and South Park are all on Wednesday night -- which ones am I supposed to drop? Am I made of stone?). But it's reasonable to say that people should be more selective about what they watch, and, especially, teach their kids to watch it critically.

So why not make that the goal of the week -- Watch TV Smarter Week, etc. -- rather than a kill-your-TV crusade that is, rightfully, almost bound to fail? Probably because, by asking people to turn off the TV altogether for a week, the group gets more publicity. But much of the publicity focuses -- again, rightly -- on how little success the group has: the Nielsens show no dent attributable to its efforts. Year after year, the group comes off like cranks, and incompetent ones at that.

Their message should be not that people should watch less TV but that they should work harder at choosing the TV they and their families watch. I have little patience for people who dismiss TV across the board: it's ridiculous to claim there's no qualitative difference between, say, The Sopranos and Date My Mom. But I also have little patience for people who let their young kids run the remote unsupervised.

Electronic media is a big part of modern life: rather than shield your kids from it, teach them about it just like you'd teach them about hygiene or traffic safety. Talk about what commercials are, why they're trying to get your money, and whether you can believe them. Talk about what they like and don't like on TV and why. In other words, teach your kids to be their own media critics, because that's what we all need to be these days.

In the end, that's a more realistic goal than unplugging your TV set--and, truth be told, much harder work. If there's a legitimate complaint about TV as a medium, it's that it too often discourages critical thinking and offers easy, simplistic answers. Ironically, that's also exactly the problem with TV Turnoff Week.

Labels: back in the day, bookworm, TV