By Ev. Edward Shyu

I. The tube is harmingyour family
About eighty years ago, the whole world was very excited about the appearance of a brand new invention ? television? (TV in abbreviation) which is an electric tube transmitting images without wires.

Nine years later, the first TVservice was promoted by the british broadcasting company. For eight decades TV has been extremely powerful in various fields of human activities such as business, education, politics, entertainment, etc. As a matter of fact, nowadays,
In American households, over 180 million Americans (more than 96 % of total) have television sets in their homes.

1. Being the major mass medium, tv by all means preoccupies human mind and lifetime without any possible resistance. I guess it would be possible for a man to be born in front of tv, to spend one third of his lifetime in watching tv, and then die in front of tv.
   As another worse case, according to National Coalition on TVViolence (NCTV) research report, there are averaged 15 acts of violence showing in one hour.
2. Also, a few years ago, a major network had scheduled the showing of a film featuring incest between a mother and son. It?s getting insane that viewers were exciting to see what Janet Jackson did in super bowl. It goes without saying that the TVbroadcast industry is nourishing the public viewers\’ lustful appetite for nasty stuff. I really wonder why the TV industry loves to show these sordid things. Do the producers of the tv programs despise their consumers\’ morality? Or the TV viewers look forward to such smutty junks?

We all know that the children segment is the best and biggest consumer segment in the market of TV broadcasting industry. As parents, you probably dare not imagine such a picture of your children sitting in front of tv that is playing a show filled with violent or sexual actions. TV polluted broadcasting programs problem is a very serious and fatal dilemma in the human society. You and I might be potential victims suffering such a problem if we are not careful enough in this matter.
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1 Nathan B. Talbot, Raising Children in Modern America , p320 ( boston, little brown )
2 TV castigated for link with violence in children broadcasting ( v102 p92 )

II. Problems of TV polluted broadcasting programs
Obviously, being so attractive, TV seems to be a very key member of the postmodern American families. TV dinners might be more popular then any regular meal for american familes. Dinner hours used to be a good time for family member gathering, talking and sharing.
However, nowadays dinner warmth is replaced by the images and noises from TV sets. Based on a census for American family life, the figures indicated that the averaged \”quality time\”, defined as the time parents spend reading, talking, and playing with a child , as this:

How can a father show his love to the children for only a few minutes per day? What do parents teach their children in ten minutes? Under such a condition, the structure of the family will be eventually dissolved,because of the relationship between the members is not so close any more.
TV and Children Education
Childhood is practically an influential time of our lives for human personality growing process. The above mentioned census also indicated that the averaged time of american children watching TV programs:

From this research, it is not so difficult to figure out the fact that an illiterate people are one tenth of the population in U.S.A as a conservative estimation, the report is sharing with us that every day children spend more than two hours in watching TV.
Has any parent ever counted the studying hour, after school, of their children ? It is a very serious issue in the field of children education that children do not have enough time to studyand get poor grade in school, because they are spending too much time in watching TV.

Let me share you an even worse fact, gerald compared the amount of spending hour of children in school and TV programs.

\” by the time these children graduate from high school, they will have spent on the average about twelve thousand hours in school and about fifteen thousand hours watching t. Having devoted more of their young lives to watching television than to any other single activity except sleep. They will have given roughly two full years, twenty four hours a day, sitting in front of the television screen. \”

TV sets seem to be playing the role of teachers, who are no longer giving orders to the children to do something in children education. Also, the more time children spend in watching tv, the less hours they do their homework or exercise.
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Gerald S. Lesser, Education and The Mass Media, p320
(Little Brown, Boston)