2000 International TV Turn Off Week, April 22-28

Not enough time in the day? Wondering what your kids look like? Forgotten how to have fun? For one whole week in April you have total power in the palm of your hand to say "NO" to television and "YES" to life during International TV Turn Off Week, Saturday 22 to Friday 28 April.

Maybe you think you can't live without TV?

But last year (1999) five million people around the world spent a week doing just that. The TV-Turnoff is a chance to be yourself, without a machine telling you what to think, feel, do and buy.

When you wake up on Saturday 22 April until you go to sleep on Friday 28 April you have complete and total power to change your life just by lifting a finger, or not, as the case may be.

Millions of people around the world will again be using TV Turn Off Week as a chance to take time out from their couch potato routines and put a bit of oompf back into their lives.

The TV Turnoff is great for kids. Children don't always like TV, especially older children. They watch it because they're bored. And television just encourages them to stay bored and keep watching. The TV-Turnoff gives children back their natural creativity. Over 25,000 schools participated last year alone.

You'll also get a chance to rediscover your own life: you are interesting. Your friends are worth knowing, and the things you do are more important than the things you watch others do on television.

What are you missing? If you're like most people, you're spending two to four hours each and every day staring at a piece of furniture. For some people, television eats up half the time you are not working or sleeping - ten years for the average person. All those things you want to be: a lover, a parent, a scholar, a wild teenager or a pillar of the community - when are you going to do all that? TV takes away your real life.

According to current ABS figures, Australians are spending more than:

• 20 times as long sitting in front of the box as we do talking or reading to our children
• 50 times as long compared to how often we go to a sports match
• 30 times longer than we do visiting arts and cultural activities.

Got a sore bum yet? What about your head, let alone your zest, vim and vigour.

Create some space in your life for other things that really matter. Bring your kids up yourself or would you prefer big business did? Kiss your favourite person for longer than an ad break, write a letter, read a book, finish your homework, the possibilities are endless.

What could you do with extra hours in every day!?

With TV Turn Off Week you can put your own window on the world and decide for yourself if it's really as bad as it seems.

There are so many other ways to relax - and is TV really all that relaxing, or just a quick easy fix?

Maybe you can even rekindle the romance in your life... stranger things have happened!

Do you ever wonder if TV is just selling back to us the kind of friends it took away from us in the first place? What if you turned on Seinfeld, only to see Jerry and the gang locked in their separate apartments, watching television. Would that be a good show? Think about it: that's how you are living now.

By leaving your TV screen blank for just one week you could literally change your whole life.

It's true! But don't just believe us. Try new improved TV Turn Off Week. Available FREE in your own loungeroom from 22-28 April and any other day you choose.

Plus, phone now and we'll throw in six steak knives. But wait! There's more... Check out the TV Turn Off Week websites below and claim back your loungeroom for yourself, your friends and your family.

• PAL Beta tape of a powerful 30-second spot for personal viewing or broadcast on request. On-line at http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/tvturnoff/toolbox/uncommercial.html
• Interviews and further statistics.
• Further background material

International TV Turn Off Week, April 22-28
(or April 24-30 in some countries)

• Celebrated in countries around the world including USA, Canada, Great Britain, India and Australia.

• In 1999 an estimated five million people and 25,000 schools participated.

• Australians watch an average of two hours per day every day of television. This is less than the British and Americans but more than just about any other thing we do outside of work and sleep.

• The list of things people could do instead of watching TV are endless. Consider riding a bike, having a cuddle, reading a book, cooking a cake, planting bulbs, going out with your mates, playing cards, reading to your children, visiting a friend, catching up with niggling jobs around the house, educating yourself, sitting quietly, campaigning for something you care about, taking a bath, being with your lover/partner/family/friends, writing letters, planning your week, going to bed early, taking a walk or better still...writing your own list and be prepared to be delighted by what happens to your life.

• The American Academy of Pediatrics has made clear what many parents have suspected for a long time: Television is bad for young children. They have also advised their members to ask parents about "media history" when treating eating disorders and obesity. Their report will add to concerns raised in 1996 by a study in Manchester showing that exposure to television caused delayed acquisition of language in toddlers.

• Classroom TV advertising, the newest craze from America, is on its way to the UK and no doubt, next stop Australia.
  
• Television viewing has been linked to heart disease and depression. And far from relaxing you, TV actually raises stress levels. It makes you lethargic, unhappy and unable to concentrate for hours after watching. It has also been linked to depression, anorexia, isolation, anxiety, debt, poverty, learning difficulties, poor communication and violence. What do you think?

• Even the church is behind this campaign. Pope John Paul II incorporating the theme of a "TV fast" into sermons in March 1996.

In Australia: Barking Owl is a local campaigner for TV Turn Off Week and co-founder of the Sustainable Business Network. It is also part of the Conscious Consumer Projects group formed late 1999 to promote Buy Nothing Day in Australia, another Media Foundation event. See www.barkingowl.com/cc for more on Buy Nothing Day. We love TV (especially Tele-Tubbies) and see a positive purpose for it, but we do advocate media literacy and balance. We even love some advertisements!

Aside from anti-television campaigners, the TV-Turnoff is endorsed by a large number of health, education and social organisations throughout the world.