TV Nation

Yet more figures showing just how addicted Americans are to the telly. The Christian Science Monitor reports figures based on Nielsen ratings that "children in the US will spend more time in front of the television set per year (1,023 hours) than in their classrooms (900 hours)." And of course it's not just the kids. "In fact, Americans typically watch more than four hours of TV every day. From age 2 through 65, that translates to watching more than 10 entire years of TV." The news peg for this latest barrage of damning stats is that TV Turnoff Week was underway in late April. (Of course it's over now, and I'm sorry I didn't get around to pointing it out earlier. Maybe I should remind myself for next year to get the students to do a "Media Fast" as part of one of my classes.)

Now in fact kids are also spending much more time on the web and with video games - and up to a point that has reduced their consumption of traditional TV. But the overall media usage component is way up.

CSM also came up with another interesting TV-related quote, this time by Frank Lloyd Wright, who once observed that "Television is like chewing gum for the eyes"!