Town gives up TV for a week Do you watch too much television? Could you give it up? Everybody in Dalton, a small town in Alabama, decided to give up television for a week. They wanted to go back to the way life used to be, before the magic box took over their living rooms. Under the rules, they couldn't use the TV set at all, even for computer games. They couldn't go to the movies instead - there's no movie theater in the town. They didn't have to turn off their radios, though. Our reporter, Julie Nichols, went to Dalton at the end of No TV Week. Here is her report.

First I asked the Mayor of Dalton, Joan Bridges. why children and old people, for example, couldn't carry on watching TV. Why did everybody have to give up? Well, we thought it might be like smoking," she told me. "You know, if you see someone else doing it, you want to do it yourself."

Next I asked some of the townspeople for their reactions. The Bryans have three children. Daniel, who is 4, and his twin sisters, Alison and Julic. Nancy Bryan thought giving up TV would be worse for the children. But things turned out a little different. "The kids didn't miss it at all," she told me. The youngest took up drawing and the twins just went off to visit friends every afternoon. But Bill, my husband, couldn't watch the sports programs every evening. He didn't know what to do with himself. He had to talk to me!" Doris Miller lives on her own. She's over 80. She still remembers when people had to make their own entertainment. "It took me back to the old days," she said. "It was boring! My television is like my friend in the corner. I talk to it, you know." I came across 19-year-old Joe Taylor in the street, on his roller skates, listening to his Walkman. "No TV Week? What's that? I didn't have to give up anything. I never watch it anyway," was his comment. When I asked him about a No Music Week, he replied "No way!" and skated off.