Charles Synyard (@CharlesSynyard)

2/4 “Katie forgot all about her mother’s new project until she picked up the newspaper the next Saturday afternoon. Willie’s article took up the entire lower half of the front page. “The headline blared: BRANFORD TELEVISION TURNOFF A HUGE SUCCESS. Underneath that, in smaller letters, was: Similar Turnoff Suggested for Wakeman Junior High. Even worse, her mother’s by-line was on the story, for all the world to see.” (11) It’s incredible to reflect on how different the media environment was a few decades back. While The Great TV Turnoff, the April 1991 twenty-fourth installment in the Fabulous Five series by Betsy Haynes, is overtly about television, it’s just as much a tale of that endangered species, the newspaper. Most of the book’s drama would never have happened if Katie Shannon’s mother weren’t a journalist. Katie, the flaming feminist of the Fabulous Five, fittingly has a freelance writer mother she calls, Atticus-like, by her first name, “Willie” (Wilma). After her boyfriend ignores her to watch baseball, and her friend Melanie ignores her to watch Star Trek reruns, Katie tells Willie, “Sometimes I think television should be banned,” without context. Willie runs with the prompt: it was clearly something she was already thinking on. Television, she grieves, is “becoming a substitute for human interaction,” and “can affect basic family relationships,” but all the Family Living teacher will talk about is the appropriateness of the programming. Thankfully another school, the rival Branford Junior High, had shown the way to go: they just completed a week-long TV turnoff, which was a great success. So the thing to do now, is pen a piece for the local paper (not named here, but we know from earlier books, The Bridgeport Post; Branford, Connecticut is a town not far from Bridgeport, where the series is set) covering the successful turnoff, and recommending one for Wakeman (7-9). “Katie let the paper drop into her lap. Oh, please, not Wakeman Junior High, she prayed fervently. The kids at Wacko will blame me. They’ll burn me at the stake like Joan of Arc. They’ll push me off a bridge—if they can find one high enough, Tony won’t like me much, either, if he can’t watch his precious baseball games. “‘Oh, brother,’ Katie muttered. ‘This is all I need. I just hope that nobody—I mean, nobody—reads it.’” (12) How Katie would have pined for our media environment. But as it is, she’s hardly gotten to school on Monday, when she not only finds that her friends have seen it, “The TV turnoff is all everybody’s talking about” (21), Dekeisha Adams and Beth Barry have some bad news. ”…Beth came rushing up with Dekeisha Adams. “‘Hey you guys,’ called Dekeisha. ‘Big trouble’ “Beth was nodding. ‘We don’t know what’s going on, but we just walked by the media center, and Mr. Bell and all the teachers are having some kind of meeting in there.’ “‘The teachers never meet in the morning before school unless it’s some kind of emergency,’ said Dekeisha. ‘I’ll bet it’s about that article your mother wrote Katie. I’ll bet they’re talking about a television turnoff for Wakeman Junior High. All I have to say is, I hooe it doesn’t happen.’ “Katie wished the ground would open up and swallow her. Everyone was looking at her. Even her best friends.” (21-22) The article, which got all but above the fold placement, appeared on Saturday, and by Monday morning, the school’s in some kind of emergency mode. Beth’s worst fears are realized when the PA system pipes up at the end of the day. Mr. Bell, the principal, says, “As I’m sure some of you know, the junior high school in Branford has just completed a very successful television turnoff. The students, the faculty, and their families all agreed to give up watching TV for one week. We’ve been discussing the idea of a TV turnoff at Wakeman, and we think it has merit. Besides the fact that it would be a terrific challenge, it would give us all a chance to do things some of us haven’t done for a while because we’ve been sitting in front of the boob tube.” (28) As detailed in post 1/4, the administration at Wakeman must not have forgotten what it was to be in junior high, as the principal gives the turnoff a competitive angle that makes the unsavory more than palatable. “‘Now, I know you are all aware that Branford beat us once in football and twice in basketball this year,’ Mr. Bell continued, as several kids in Katie’s class booed. ‘And I know none of you would like to see Branford Junior High get ahead of us… “‘Consequently, I was so sure of the support of my students and faculty that I called the principal of Branford myself and told him to step aside for Wakeman Junior High. In order to prove our superiority, I am dhallenging you to turn off your television sets for not one—but two whole weeks! The turnoff will begin on Friday. We’ll call the newspapers and radio stations. And we’ll prove to Branford that Wakeman Junior High can’t be beaten! Are you with me?’” (28-29) Do I call Mr. Bell a true people person or a weasel? How to get your kids to do something they don’t want to? Invite them to do it better than a rival school! The rivalry is clearly being trumped up by the administrators, but moments after the least serious students are the ones speaking up for this self-improving exercise. “‘Come on, everybody!’ shouted Richie Corrierro. ‘Let’s show those sissies at Branford what Wacko kids are made of!’ “‘Yeah,’ called Tony Sanchez. ‘They did one lousy week. Bug deal! We can do two with our eyes shut!’ “‘You don’t have to shut your eyes,’ said Shawnie Pendergrast. ‘Just turn off your television.’” (29-30) Tony Sanchez I don’t recall, but Richie Corrierro is a class clown who invited Melanie to kiss a plastic frog a couple books back, in Jana to the Rescue, while Shawnie Pendergrast’s irresponsibility has caused headaches for Katie in book eight, The Runaway Crisis, and more recently for Beth in the last book, Mall Mania. But often, it is the least academically inclined or reliable who are the first to enlist, whether to fight in war, or in a competition with a nearby fellow junior high school. The set-up nature of the turnoff almost makes Laura McCall and the Fantastic Foursome’s efforts to derail it, simply because the Fabulous Five is involved, sympathetic. This whole course of events would never have happened today. Recently I mentioned the local paper to a relation, and he was surprised it hadn’t gone under years ago. Today, it is (perhaps for better) hardly more influential than one blog—one very openly biased blog, and some columnist’s recommendation would never be taken as marching orders so uncritically, so quickly. Thus, The Great TV Turnoff, at but 35 years old, provides a neat window into the past. #BetsyHaynes #TheGreatTVTurnoff #FabulousFive #television #TV #newspapers #media #oldmedia #news #opinion #influence #childrensliterature #childrensbooks #literature #books