Burbank, CA-Fresh off this past weekend's Worldwide Day of Play, where a 3-hour block of afternoon programming was replaced with dead air to encourage kids to get outside and work on getting in shape, popular children's television network Nickelodeon announced today that it will be repeating the effort on a weekly basis.
"We at Nickelodeon feel that children need more encouragement to turn off the television and exercise," Nickelodeon president Cyma Zarghami explained. "Our experts tell us that the most effective way of providing this encouragement is by having one of the many channels that kids enjoy go down for three hours right after lunch every Saturday. Kids won't know what to do and their only recourse will be vigorous exercise. The only potential roadblock would be if some evil genius were to invent a device which allows for easy changing of the channels, but our sources put this kind of technology many years in the future. The obesity epidemic will be a non-issue by that point."
Seventh grader Sara Grimble, a fan of such tween oriented programs as Drake and Josh and Zoey 101, revealed that "At first I was like, great, now even Spongebob thinks I'm fat. But then I thought, what a great idea. With this, and the pulling all of their junk food ads, I think that Nickelodeon is really going to make a.....oh, they aren't pulling junk food ads. Well then what the hell is this gonna do!"
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
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5 comments:
Oh, that's funny! Great way to make the point, Zoo.
Still, I guess we should be grateful that a television network (!) is making some effort.
I liken this effort to the tobacco industry's attempts to educate the public on the dangers of smoking. One difference however is that we know for a fact that cigarrete smoke is harmful while the effects of watching television aren't exactly nailed down. It very likely isn't harmful at all. Why doesn't Nickelodean call for a world wide day of no reading or other activity that doesn't require movement. The answer is because there isn't a massive movement, ripe with hysteria and spin, behind that like there is for the "obesity epidemic". Nickelodean has an agenda just like everybody else. Harumph!
to the shadow...
I'm as baffled about this as I am about the push for PE.
I mean I only had half a semester of it in highschool. and no college sports, or sports extracurriculars. My 5'6" 120 lb self must be egregiously overweight, and competitive sports (which is what pe usually consists of) are the only way to resolve my weight problem.
On this topic I think that Sandy from http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/ has an excellent grasp on the current obesity fears sweaping the country. She is about as sharp as they come and I'd recommend starting at post one and reading them all.
Kids won't know what to do if there's no Nickelodeon to watch? Hmm, what about Playstation/XBox and the computer? Are they going to disable those for those 3 hours after lunch every Saturday too? And they have really ticked off DH, as he watches Nick (and we don't have any kids in the house), so who is Nickelodeon to tell my hubby he needs to get off his kiester and move? As an adult, I think that is his decision, not theirs. And like kids playing outside is going to eliminate their so-called obesity. Crap like this just makes me see red.
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