Alone in the Darkness

John Berry, III -- Library Journal, 2/15/1999

Pity the poor insomniacs, facing a week of deafening silence without TV

Our first vote in the "Bad Idea" competition of 1999 is cast for National TV-Turnoff Week. Planned for April 22-28, the event's sponsors say it is supposed to help participants "rediscover that life can be more constructive, rewarding, healthy--even informed--with more time and less TV." The library listservs have already begun carrying the TV turnoff's initial hype, a typical combination of relatively shrill antitelevision rhetoric and homey, cutesy ways libraries can exploit the week to promote and, one hopes, increase the use of libraries.

Like every parent, reader, and librarian, I have misgivings about the negative side of television and the immense amount of time my children and their friends clock in front of the tube. I even subscribe to the idea that it has cut into their and my reading time, competed successfully with other entertainments and pursuits, and increased everyone's intake of mindless pap, awful violence, and biased reporting. I might also agree that, in general, the state of the ubiquitous medium is even worse now than it was way back when Newton Minow labeled it "a vast wasteland."

These are the apparent presumptions of the TV turnoff advocates, and for its sins and our mental health, Americans must turn off TV for that week. "April is the cruelest month," the poet said, and for an insomniac like me that doubtful indictment may become accurate. At best it will be a more sleepless month without the gentle, soporific massage of the cathode rays of the infomercials that soothe me through the otherwise fearful silences of late night and the wee hours.

If I think TV is lousy, why do I oppose the TV turnoff? Because it serves no purpose. When addicts like me do turn the TV off, we don't turn to a library or book. More important, I am actually far better informed with TV, despite its biases and limitations, than I was before it came along. I have witnessed, live, proceedings of the U.S. House and Senate, the great trials of our time, human-made and natural disasters, the fluctuations of the markets, and even the readings of poets, novelists, historians, and biographers.

As for my kids, they have learned even more from TV--from Sesame Street to C-SPAN--than I. Actually, they are being wooed away from TV now, not by print, alas, but by TV's interactive cousins, computer games and the Internet. I suppose some true believer will soon start a "Turnoff the Internet Week."

Today I have more than 100 channels from which to choose, and I am no longer imprisoned by NBC, CBS, or ABC. I do wish my own point of view on many issues was seen on TV more often. Like so many Americans, I have yet, for example, to hear or see any commentator come close to explaining why I am against the impeachment of the President, or why I voted for him twice. Since these annual TV Turnoff Weeks were initiated, television has continued to get more commercial and less interesting, yet it has increased its reach both in available programming and tuned-in audience. The turnoff has been singularly ineffective. Since the turnoff, both the quantitative spread and the qualitative decline of the medium have accelerated.

Some people oppose all technology on ideological, religious, and philosophical grounds. Some set aside regular periods when they will not use technology. Their efforts have not changed technology for better or for worse, nor blunted its ever-increasing intrusion into our lives. I respect such beliefs, as long as some beknighted crusader doesn't try to convert me, or accuse me of being evil because I watch TV.

Still, before you commit your library to participation in the TV turnoff, consider the message you send when you endorse closing down one channel of information. For librarians to advocate banning one medium seems to violate their beliefs in both free expression and free access to information. Instead, put your money and your mouth behind National Library Week (April 11-17). Have pity, too, on us poor insomniacs, facing a week of deafening silence in the long, dark night all alone with our thoughts. Nighty night!