Turn it off
The idea behind National TV Turnoff Week is to try and restore to everyday life some of the things that have been displaced by watching TV (and, I suppose in an earlier age, by listening to the radio). This would include conversation, exercise, hobbies... a huge variety of occupations which are now squeezed out of everyday life as we sit glued to our TV screens.
To find out more, check out the TV-Free America web site at http://www.tvfa.org/turnoff.html . They've come up with some fascinating statistics - for instance, the average American home has a TV on for 7 hours and 12 minutes a day. Well, if you take out of the day 8 hours for sleeping... and another 8 hours for work/school... that leaves just 48 minutes a day to get a life. (Oh alright, I know I'm cheating with the statistics, but that's what they're for!). So, maybe TVFA has a point.
Their British counterparts can be spotted at http://www.whitedot.org/ (the white dot is the little thing that appears when you turn your set off, for those of you who never do it!). Their site has an entertainingly novel way of getting you into it - you have to turn off a TV with an irritating announcer on it before you can access the rest of the site. Very droll.
A Communication Revolution
The reason why broadcasting has become such a central part of modern life probably lies back in the 18th/19th centuries. It's all to do with communication. According to Raymond Williams, the author of Television - Technology and Cultural Form (Fontana, 1974), TV and radio have revolutionised the way we are.
According to Williams, at the beginning of the industrial revolution, the ruling classes (for want of a better word) decided to teach working people to read... but not to write. The theory was that the only people who needed to communicate were the bosses - because they were issuing the orders. All working people had to be able to do was to read the orders. They weren't expected to be issuing any orders themselves.
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