Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, October 7, 1994                   TAG: 9411150050
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A NATION OF ZOMBIES

But when would be a better time? The all-consuming nature of the telecommunications revolution only underscores the need to gain control over the video technology that proliferates in our households and dominates ever more hours of the day.

Not to kill the thing, of course - but to convert it from master to servant. The urgent need to deal with our addiction is made clear by any appraisal of what the screen beams, hour after hour, day after day, into our diminished lives.

A newly published book, "Kick the TV Habit," by Steve and Ruth Bennett, collects facts that should startle any minds not already numbed into a television-induced torpor. Such as:

The average American family is glued to the tube for almost seven hours a day. That's 2,500 hours a year.

By the end of high school, the average child will have watched 25,000 murders.

Excessive TV viewing is more predictive of high cholesterol and obesity than a family history of cholesterol problems, obesity or heart disease.

Teen-agers see an estimated 100,000 alcohol advertisements before they reach drinking age.

Of an estimated 140,000 sexual references a child is exposed to every year, some 150 deal with abstinence, responsibility or birth control.

In 1985, the sale of war toys (heavily marketed in children's programming) exceeded $1 billion. The sale of all children's books in America did not reach $1 billion until this year.

Think of all the harmful messages, about love and marriage, sex and violence, conflict and consumption, beamed from the vast wasteland into impressionable minds. Think of all the hours lost, when kids could be reading and studying, exercising and playing, or just enjoying their family's company. Think of how America would have turned out if its founders and pioneers and immigrants and inventors had been couch-potato zombies.

If you think 2,500 hours annually of television is a good or even a neutral phenomenon, you must be out of your mind, or a network executive.

Of course there are good programs, and not only on public television. And the medium can be a powerful instrument for good as well as for evil. Censorship would, in any case, be a cure worse than the disease.

But we have to regain control of our lives. One way to begin is recommended in the Bennetts' book: Parent-teacher associations, schools, churches, civic clubs and others could organize television-awareness campaigns and TV-turndown initiatives, in which families demonstrate to themselves that they can become critical viewers and survive - say, a week - with less television-watching.

It's not too early to muster the willpower. Let's hope it's not too late.