Group Gives TV a Cold Reception

As millions of Americans prepare to tune into television’s sweeps programming tonight, one tiny nonprofit group here plans to create some static for the television industry.

TV-Free America, financed by private donations, is holding its third National TV-Turnoff Week today through Wednesday, just as the industry May ratings sweeps are getting underway. The group’s sole purpose is to wean people away from television, and it runs the only nationwide effort that focuses attention not on the quality of television programming but on the quantity that people watch.

Currently, the average American watches four hours of television a day--or two months of nonstop TV a year, according to Nielsen Media Research. By 2006, TV-Free America wants to cut by half the number of hours people view.

Through its Turnoff Week, the group also hopes people will reevaluate the role the medium plays in their daily routines and turn to more stimulating activities. But no matter what people do instead of watching the tube--whether they write a letter to the president, wash the dog or do a rain dance--they will be better off, TV-Free officials say.

“The idea’s not to beat people over the head with this idea that TV is bad for them, that it’s rotting their brain, that it’s destroying their communities,” says Henry Labalme, who co-founded the group in 1994 and is its executive director. “But to say, try life with a little less TV and a little more time, and you’ll have more fun.”

Labalme has never owned a television set, although he came close to buying a TV once when he was out of work in 1989. But his friend Matt Pawa--a lawyer who would go on to help found TV-Free America--talked him out of it. That’s when they had one of many discussions about how to save the world, Labalme says. “We kept coming back to television as a root source of so many of our environmental, social and political problems.”

A few years later he took a two-month sabbatical from his marketing job with an environmental consulting firm to start TV-Free, and ended up never going back. He is dedicated to the cause, but his reach is limited, in part by his mission. Refusing to support television in any form, he has turned down invitations to appear on talk shows and CNN.

And the goal, ambitious under any circumstance, is perhaps even more difficult given that the Turnoff will occur at a time when the lure of viewing is perhaps strongest--during the ratings sweeps. This year’s event will coincide with the airing of the six-hour miniseries of Stephen King’s “The Shining,” and with the episode of “Ellen” in which the title character comes out as a lesbian.

In fact, during last year’s Turnoff, which also occurred during sweeps, television ratings increased, according to Nielsen Media Research.

“Although TV-Free America may not like it, most people enjoy watching free over-the-air broadcast television,” says Dennis Wharton, a spokesman for the National Assn. of Broadcasters. “It’s questionable whether Americans will stop watching compelling programming just to satisfy the whims of a Washington-based special-interest group.”

But the Turnoff has generated some mass appeal, and TV-Free has found itself several strong allies. The group has received endorsements from 50 national organizations, ranging from the American Medical Assn. to the Child Welfare League of America, as well as from teachers’ unions and 25 state governors. In addition, at least 25,000 schools across the country have bought TV-Free’s $10 organizer kits to host a Turnoff event.

While it is not possible to calculate exactly how much effect the group is having on society, it is transforming the living rooms, and lives, of many.

Last year, tens of thousands of letters poured into TV-Free’s sparse offices. Some adults wrote that marriages previously on the brink of failing were restored. Others wrote that they felt less anxiety.

One sixth-grade girl said she “got to spend a little time talking to my mom because she turned off the TV during dinner.” And Paul Cooney of Bakersfield wrote, “We put the TV in the closet on April 24 and it’s still there. I sleep better and my wife and I talk more. We read. Time seems slower, more coherent and focused.”

Most of the participants are students in schools that offer kids various incentives to turn off their televisions. One principal spent an entire day on her school’s roof to reward those who had stayed away from TV for seven days.

At Castle Heights Elementary School in Santa Monica, Catherine Johnson is preparing her classroom for its first Turnoff. The kids brainstormed a list of alternative activities, which included planting a garden, helping Mom cook, daydreaming and the goal of one ambitious 7-year-old: to write a book.