KIDS THESE DAYS:

Last week, Costa Mesa Mayor Eric Bever asked the city staff to draft a letter inviting telecommunications providers to do business with the city. The letter was the response to the high number of complaints about Time-Warner, the city’s major provider of cable television services.

I am a very satisfied Time-Warner customer and have been for about four years. Great service, no problems.

Oh, wait — I use them for cable Internet service, not cable television.

The cable TV controversy is a hoot. While I’m reading all of the hard-luck stories of the dissatisfied Time-Warner customers, I’m reviewing one option that is unthinkable to them: Turn off the tube.

Sitting on the sidelines reading the stories of the junkies who can’t get their TV fix provides me with a rare perspective. What I see are many TV viewers who complain about the garbage on television, then complain that they can’t get good service to watch it.

Make up your minds, people.

Actually, I don’t really care a whit whether an adult watches television. Grown-ups, knock yourselves out.

But television is bad for kids. Even the American Pediatric Assn. says so.

So here I am again, trying in vain to get our school board to get their arms around a full-blown, no-TV campaign in our schools. This year, TV Turnoff Week is April 21-27.

The Newport-Mesa school board is in good company. Most of the school boards in the state are also ignoring the positive benefits of having kids turn off the tube.

School boards that whine about budget cuts remind me of Time-Warner customers: The boards complain the reductions will affect the quality of education in their districts but fail to take one of the key actions that has proven to improve both grades and test scores; one that costs so little money to implement, it’s scary.

So, I don’t feel sorry for any of them.

School board member Dave Brooks has had some experience with turning off the tube. “Our family has gone through no-TV phases from time to time,” said Brooks. “But after awhile we realized that there were some things that we enjoyed watching together, such as sporting events.”

Brooks has a good point, namely, that used in moderation, television can be a nice diversion, even educational.

But many homes do not have the parental involvement of the Brookses and the Smiths. That involvement decreases dramatically when the home has only one parent, and there are plenty of those in Newport-Mesa.

Several years ago, the board passed a resolution endorsing TV Turnoff Week. That was significant, and when I asked Brooks about the possibility of another resolution for this year, he said he would look into it.

One presidential candidate understands the power of turning off the tube. And even though I won’t be voting for Barack Obama, I appreciate his comments to a crowd about 10 days ago.

While Bever and others were complaining about not being able to watch “Family Guy,” Obama was telling the audience, “It’s not good enough for you to say to your child, ‘Do good in school,’ and then that child comes home, you’ve got the TV set on.

“So turn off the TV set,” he continued, “Put the video game away.”

Obama’s point was that parents need to set a better example for their kids in order to help them do better in school. It’s not rocket science but it is controversial because asking parents to turn off the TV is very close to asking a smoker to put away a cigarette.

Funny, too, that a politician who is spending millions of dollars a month on TV ads would ask a crowd to stop watching them.

We now have at least one school board member who gets it, who understands that by encouraging kids to watch less television, they will read more, play outside more and will get better grades and test scores. Those results are fact, not fantasy.

With budget cuts looming, our kids need someone on the board to champion a no-TV program.

Time-Warner won’t be happy about kids turning off the tube, but from what I’m reading, no one is going to care whether they are upset.

STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer. Send story ideas to [email protected].