TV is no longer the 'great eye' it used to be, the internet and all those online goodies has now taken over. The TV industry is now showing cheap 'shock' programs, soaps, and lots of T&A to help secure viewership to sustain advertising rates.

For kids it's cartoons from the moralist/religious right to the almost obscene/sexual anything goes left.

There is quality programing on the specialty stations, but they are few and far between.

The next few years TV will become that 20th century thing, where families sat together watching their favourites after dinner.

Grumpy wrote:

I am sorry Grumpy, but I believe you confused. Just because left-leaning people want to share the resources of the planet, does not mean that they wish people to live immoral lives. It does not mean that they allow their children to be brought up in obscene circumstances. In fact, I believe it is more ethical/moral to share than it is to hoard. Further, I believe all "Christian" fundamentalists are in error of by not following their sacred book when they support a government that believes in secretly "selling"/giving away to the rich shared resources that belong to all.

I believe that these bills are highly unethical; and, they should face some sort of constitutional challenge in the courts if the NDP can't find the backbone and the resources to stop them. Where are the major media players at a time when they should be shouting in the papers, on the radio and from the CTV sky-cam that these bills smack of fascism/dictatorialism and that it is taking away their right to inform the public? Further, if the people of BC stand for this, then they deserve the government that they have.

My apologies for the typos/errors above. I hope my message is straight-forward even through my grammatical maze.

Ummm.... ok other than a bitch session at social scientists who dare critique the guilty pleasure consumed by the majority of North Americans (e.g., in North America what is the average amount of time per capita of vacuous TV watching per week? I've heard figures in the 28+ hours range, although I don't have a link handy to back that up.)... what exactly is the point of this article?

Reductionist arguments that say TV is the cause of all evils are foolish. But is that what the studies say, or do they say TV has an impact on increasing negative behaviours in children?

Eat junk food, and you get fat and unhealthy. If you go to the convenience store and you are surrounded by ten aisles of process packaged crap, and a tiny basket with a browning banana and a couple of franken-food red delicious apples, do you really have a choice to eat healthy? Is that what you are being encouraged to do? Or is the profit margin on the processed packaged food simply far greater, and thus it is in the interests of business to push that over healthy alternatives?

Could there not be some correlation between watching the overwhelming amount of pap broadcast on corporate TV designed to sell, sell, sell and perhaps influencing negative behaviours? The fact that what is manufactured for broadcast appeals to and encourages certain inherent biological human drives does not obviate a legitimate critique of the broadcast industry if their tactics are designed to increase self-destructive behaviour. And if you take the time to examine advertising theory to young children, it is specifically designed to do just that. They, however, couch the resulting behaviour as something that will increase profits. Business is only interested in profit, preferably by the shortest quickest route.

This article is one sided, appears hastily written, and subsitutes considered thought and indepth analysis for simplistic invective. In fact, it reads like a FOX network rant.

Please try again.

I have noticed how my daughter will cue into the music for kids commercials, I suspect that that they use tones and notes that are easy for kids to hear and recognize. Thankfully we have a mute button to combat this, plus most of her watching is on a channel with no commercials.

We watch PBS here...(american I know, but no commercials) And some treehouse. I used to tape shows, and zap the commercials out. (bad bad consumer I am...)
But in the end that power button is there for a reason. Parents have to be on this, its like anything...too much can be a bad thing. My older kids have cable in their rooms, and they also know that Mama knows where the connections are and that the screen can go blank for secret TV watching (tried and true knowledge)
Aside:
Has anyone seen The BIG BIG world on PBS, for preschoolers? I must say that is just incredible for little ones...hehhe, and Snook (hes a tree sloth, who sounds a lot like a new ager) cracks me up.

Yea we generally limit it to the evening hours, she loves the Einstein videos.

Dora, Dora, Dora the Explorer... Dora, Dora, Dora, Explora Dora!

(Hey, it rattles around my head everday, just thought I'd share!)

I know, I'm an evil man. Don't make me start singing the Clifford song!

Stump. if you do, Ill start singing the theme from thomas the train....Bwahahahhahaha....

cbc kids. good programming. no commercials.

There were a few errors in either the interpretations or the hypothesis of the studies included in the April issue of the Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med which was focused on the role of media on children's health outcomes. This is obviously a huge issue since TV has overtaken quite a significant portion of childrearing duties - hence the interest. The last study mentioned in the angry article above was rather unfortunately misunderstood - the researchers found that only teenagers watching 2 or more hours of unmonitored TV and having sexually "rigid" parents were more likely to have intercourse - but those teenagers who had parents that did NOT disapprove of sex (i.e. - were sexually "free") also had increased sexual activity - but this was independent of the amount of TV watched. The point of these studies is to have data on the impact and influence of media on the health, behaviour, and pyschology of youth (who are the most impressionable members of society) - even if some studies may seem obvious - they need to be done to give foundations for future policies regarding such things as the type of advertising allowed during youth programming, and they also give tools to parents and educators to modify the environment inducing a negative outcome.

James Burns wrote:

surrounded by ten aisles of process packaged crap, and a tiny basket with a browning banana and a couple of franken-food red delicious apples, do you really have a choice to eat healthy?

UBC researchers did an interesting study recently. They placed bowls of sweets on some secretaries' desks within easy reach. They placed bowls of the same sweets near other secretaries' desks in locations that required the secretaries to get up from their chairs and walk a few steps to grab a sweet. The secretaries who had sweets within easy reach ate a lot more of them than the secretaries who had to walk a few steps to reach them. So much for the battle between temptation and willpower.

Willpower has its limits. Temptation does make a difference. If a member of my household buys a big bag of chocolate almonds, I wind up snacking on them because they're easily available in moments of weakness. I have never in my life made a trip to a store for the specific purpose of buying junk food. I occasionally buy a very small quantity of chocolate almonds if I'm in a store buying something else. But I never, ever buy a large quantity of chocolate almonds even if they're on sale at half price. I understand and acknowledge the temptation factor.

Speaking of temptation, another study showed strong willpower is not a free ride. Two groups of people who enjoy chocolates were given mathematical problems to solve. Those who solved the problems while successfully fighting the temptation of chocolates placed within easy reach were distracted and didn't perform as well at problem-solving as those who didn't have chocolates placed in front of them.

A very small amount of dark chocolate is healthy and satisfying too. Even when a large bag of dark chocolate is laying around, a small amount is enough to satisfy. Milk chocolate is unhealthy, unsatisfying and too much is never enough.

Treehouse is an evil scourge, and should be banned from the earth.

Yes. Yes it does.

Stump
NOOOOOOO not Dora, arrrtgh I can’t stand that show!!

What makes me laugh is the “Disney environmentalist” view of the world kids get from TV. All the furry little animals playing together, when in real life they would be eating each other or competing for food. I find to much of the TV is so far disconnected from reality as to be harmful. I think you can teach how nature works without being gory.

That’s why I intend to send her up to the cousins farm when she is older so she gets a better understanding of life.

Darcy

While I admit that it drives me crazy, and my wife hates Daniel Cook, I don’t know if I will go so far as calling it evil, annoying as hell yes, but not evil.

actually sometimes kids shows have some good music playing and my do the cha-cha in the kitchen during part of her Einstein shapes video.

Bleah, Dora! Her horrendous voice! HOLA!!!

BTW is anyone watching CBC kids? Does Alyson Court still host? I find her almost too beautiful for childrens' programming. It may prematurely awaken certain brain clusters. It is hard to believe that the same person was Loonette The Clown and Emily Elizabeth of Clifford The Big Red Dog. Speaking of the latter, I always wanted to know what they did with his doo-doo. Surely each log would be the size of an SUV.

Hmmm, you're right I've never seen an episode entitled Clifford's Big Brown Dump.

Colin:
Zaboomafoo is not too bad for teaching kids about animals. A little bit surreal to be sure, but I grew up with a Giant who talked to roosters and giraffes (RIP Friendly), grouchy monsters in garbage cans, and a man who liked to dress up and play make believe with puppets. Somehow I turned out mostly OK. :-)

Shannon Rupp argues that there could be other variables that affect things like aggression and obesity in kids - not just TV. Most social-scientific studies of this sort uses multiple regression and other statistical techniques to separate out the influence of each variable. For example, studies of how new immigrants adjust to the workforce "control" for variables like age, education, and gender, so that you don't point the finger of blame at the wrong cause (or correlation).

So is Rupp arguing that this study did not control for any other variables? Or did she just look at the findings and find them disagreeable?

Interesting you mentioned immigrants, my wife has been talking to her friends who have kids in school here that also did elementary and/or high school overseas. Most of the kids who were taught overseas are bored and find school here far easier.

Zaboomafoo and Kratt's Kreatures are not only fun for the kids...lotsa single moms out there (me included) love the Brothers Kratt, too ;-))

Now I don't feel so bad for thinking Loonette is probably quite a looker without the clown nose!

A little Friendly Giant trivia.

Bob Homme never allowed merchandising of Friendly, because he didn't want to ruin the illusion for kids. Very honourable I thought. I doubt such high ideals would fly in this day and age.

Ah- The Friendly Giant!! My fave part of that show was when he got the chairs ready at the beginning... To this day when I go into the yard with a cup of tea and arrange the patio chairs to face the sun, I think of The Friendly Giant... haha
Ah, how lucky we were to grow up in such innocent times,...

Stump, I'm glad to report that Rafi holds the same level of integrity as our Friendly Giant - he actually turned Disney down to make a movie out of his Baby Beluga creation - not that he was against the idea of the movie - but he didn't want the mass marketing of baby beluga merchandise which is the bigger draw, of course, for Disney and Co. I can't believe that Mr. Dressup has been overshadowed by the Friendly Giant - he is the only TV personality whose death affected me on a personal level. Although CBC has great innovative programs for kids, it is a shame that the programming that was part of the "Galaxy Network" (a branch of the Knowledge network which catered to educational programming for kids) was cut-off due to cuts in funding. I'd still tune into Today's Special if it were on the air....

It would not.

I have a severe aversion to the Harry Potter books, in part because of how quickly they were licenced into a multi-channel marketing machine. I personally think they're poorly written, but at least kids were reading them...and talking about them....Rowling got kids reading. this is a good thing.

It's not as if she needed the money when the Hollywood machine did what it does best: jumped all over a story and saturated the market with it. Impact? Fewer kids reading the books -- for sure -- than would have if they had not been licenced.

We can all probably thank George Lucas and Michael Eisner for this. Lucas made Hollywood aware of the power of licencing; Eisner turned Disney into nothing more than a multi-level multi-channel multi-media marketing machine. It was tragic really.

I think the Harry Potter series has created a whole generation of new readers. Kids were getting excited about reading books, just as everyone was bemoaning how little they read. I know most of the kids books when I was growing up were far to dull to garner interests, luckily I discovered the “Classics” books written before political correctness or book fads. I also think they were decently written for the audience they were aimed at. I suspect they will be around for a long time.

Want happy, creative, articulate, yearning to read kids? Step 1: throw away your TV.

The problem is not what's on TV - though in a perfect world a Clifford log would land on Dora - it is the activity or lack of activity implicit in watching television.

It is boring to point out that television watching is an entirely passive experience. It is dull to suggest that the shows for kids generally treat children like morons. And trite to suggest that commercials directed at children are incredibly effective because children do not have the deep, deep pools of cynicism which innoculates adults.

But here's the thing: limiting television, restricting what can be watched or the hours a day does nothing but lead to fights. Similarily, having a television but only playing videos results in the same sort of power struggle around the box.

So, Step 1, get rid of the tv. Step 2 is up to you but expect to be hauling twenty books at a time from the library, plan on spending several hours a day building things, looking for sea glass, inspecting lego structures, looking stuff up on Google, going to the park.

Step 2 is taking back the rearing of your children from the appliances to paraphrase Nora Ephron. The kids are going to whine for a week or two when the box disappears; but they will soon get over it when they discover that mum and dad are available to fill in many of those hours.

The payoff for parents is great kids and no more Dora. The payoff for the kids is a life rather than the blue lit half life in front of the box.

I will have to disagree, TV can offer a great deal and good stuff can be found, although there is a lot of crap to wade through. Our kids are going to be assaulted by a very high tech society, teaching them how to handle it will be a survival skill. You can even use the crap on TV as a teaching tool. Like everything they can get to much TV, use it sensible.

How about going back and reading (or re-reading) Jerry Mander's "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television". His points focused on how the medium of television shaped what content would work best with audiences. Those characteristics of the medium itself shape the content in profound and negative ways. There's more to the 'evil of TV' than studies that claim TV makes teens "fat, stupid and hot for sex".

Between e-mail and other computer applications, Internet surfing and computer gaming, we're finding lots of ways to get our CRT time without watching TV. Add in digital cable and satellite and the arrival of the several hundred channel universe and it's no surprise the old-line major US networks are getting so desperate and copycattish. It is my understanding that average television viewing time has been steadily declining over the last number of years and the trend is continuing.

Most families I know with young children stopped their cable service. The kids watch videos or DVDs. It is the same in our house.

I didn't have a tv for long stretches of time growing up. Now I work in the self-same industry. It's a tool, just like a hammer. Don't blame the hammer when you whack your thumb.

Just like in a library, the good stuff on tv (it exists) is hard to find.

As to tv being passive, that's more true of adult programs than kids' ones. Dora does invite participation, as do many other shows. It's not interactive per se, but the intent and opportunity is there.

So, I think too much tv is clearly a bad thing, but a little is important for kids, just so they have an understanding of the medium and a bit of tv-literacy. I know my child does get to watch tv regularly but in small doses, and bitches when I say No, but that lasts all of about two minutes and then she finds something else to do.

TV is out... haven't watched it in 7 years. Too many good books to read, languages to study, mountains to climb, dogs to walk, coffees to drink with friends at cafes, sites like this to surf,.... yadi yadi yadi