TV turnoff
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The TV turnoff network (formerly TV-Free America) is an organization that tries to encourage children and adults to watch less television and so have more time for a healthier life and more community participation. It is a grassroots alliance of many different organisations.
[edit] TV turnoff week
The 2007 TV-Turnoff Week is scheduled for April 23-29. It has been sponsored in the US by the TV-Turnoff Network since 1994. So far 24 million people have taken part and the organization estimates that 7.6 million people took part in 2004.
[edit] Members and supporters
Important members of the network include AdBusters in Canada and White Dot in the UK (named after the small white dot that would briefly appear when turning off older TV sets, especially black-and-white ones). A related organization, Asesores TV La Familia Internacional works in many countries with large Spanish-speaking populations.
More than seventy other organizations support the movement in the US, such as the American Heart Association, the American Medical Association, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and the YMCA. (A complete list is available on the TV-Turnoff Network site.) In 2004, a major partnership was created with the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Books that inspired the TV-Turnoff week are The Plug-in Drug by Marie Winn (1977), Neil Postman's The Disappearance of Childhood (1982), and Glued to the Tube (2002).
Anti-TV "guerrillas" use a small device known as TV-B-Gone to remotely turn off television sets within 14 meters in an attempt to reduce "ambient TV" in public space.
