Tune it Out, Turn it Off, Dropkick the TV
by Mad Dog

   I don’t know how many people will actually turn their TVs off this week other than when they wake up on the sofa at 3:00 am to find it blaring an infomercial for lo-carb laundry detergent, but I suspect it won’t be many. Last year 7 million people participated, which sounds good until you realize that’s only 2.4% of the people in the U.S. That means 283 million of us were convinced we couldn’t live without television, the very thought of spending an evening without it sending screaming hot Buffy withdrawal flashes through our La-Z-boy draped bodies.

   For some reason no one likes to admit that they watch a lot of TV. It’s like having the phone ring when you’re asleep — you can be so groggy you don’t know what planet you’re on but you’ll still deny to the death that you were woken up. Don’t feel bad, like drinking orange juice straight from the container when no one’s watching, it’s something we all do. Yet even while none of us will admit to watching much TV, somehow we can all magically repeat what Simon Cowell said last week verbatim. Isn’t osmosis a wonderful thing?

   Turning the TV off really isn’t that difficult. A couple of years ago I spent eight months in Bali and I did it without a television. This isn’t the sacrifice I like to think it was since even if I’d had one I wouldn’t have been able to understand anything they aired. There was a recurring rumor that an English language newscast existed but everyone who mentioned it said it was on a different channel at a different time, and the few chances I had to watch a TV during those times it was nowhere to be found. What I would come across were Indonesian soap operas and Chinese fantasy shows dubbed into Indonesian, neither of which were any more comprehensible than the guests on The Jerry Springer Show.

   If you still think being without TV is torture, be glad you don’t live in Bhutan, a small country in Asia nestled between Tibet and India which no one’s heard of unless they watch the Travel Channel, and judging by its ratings that would put you in an elite group of six. They got their first TV station four years ago in the capital city of Thimbu, where all of the 40,000 people finally got the chance to watch repeats of Seinfeld four times a day just like the rest of us. By now they’re probably watching an average of 15 minutes and 44 seconds of advertising each prime time hour just like we do. And their children will see between 30,000 and 40,000 commercials a year just like ours. Who says we’re not a great role model for the world?

   The next thing you know Bhutan will have a National TV Turn-Off Week, but that won’t affect me. Not because I won’t be in Bhutan — though stranger things have happened in this world, even if I am hard pressed to think of one at the moment — but rather because even if I am there I won’t care. See, I’m hooked on reading now, so I’m sure I’ll be too busy reading the Classics Illustrated version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in preparation for National Masturbation Month to even notice.