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| February 15, 2000 |
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| Dear Television Viewer: |
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| Last week, network TV executives announced that their audience continues to shrink. This fall, the New Season drew the smallest audiences to date. Executives were shocked, yet doctors were not surprised. |
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| Television has always made people smaller. This fact first came to light in 1954 when Cleveland mother Anne Riggins noticed that her sons were not growing up at all. Chronologically, Michael and Tommy Riggins were 10 and 12, yet each looked and acted as if he were only three. The tiny boys cried, whined, and spoke in very simple sentences. Each read at a first-grade level and refused to befriend anyone who didn't watch Howdy Doody. |
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| Mrs. Riggins was frantic. Doctors examined the boys and made a startling conclusion. The cause of their smallness? TV. Eighteen hours of TV per day had made the Riggins boys ACTUALLY SMALLER! Unless Mrs. Riggins had the strength to turn off the TV and leave it off, doctors warned, her sons might even DISAPPEAR! |
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| The Riggins boys were lucky. Weaned off TV, they grew to a normal size, though their brains are still slightly stunted. Today, Tommy is an NFL referee and Michael runs a Cleveland car dealership. Yet other victims of Incredible Shrinking Television Trauma (ISTT) were not so fortunate. |
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| In 1965, doctors at General Hospital were mystified by an elderly female patient. Asked her height, she said "5'3," yet doctors measured her at 3'1". Mental capacity was also diminished. The woman could not say where she lived, guessing "The Ponderosa". Asked to name the president, she replied "Monty Hall." |
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| Doctors diagnosed ISTT but it was too late. Before the teeny woman could cut back on TV, she shrunk to two feet, then just 14 inches tall! Finally, she WITHERED AWAY! Her last words were "Aarrghhh! I'm melting! I'm melting!" |
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| In 1972, the American ISTT Society began seeking a cure. It was an uphill fight. Network executives denied their product was harmful and scientists in other countries scoffed. "There already is a cure," a British doctor said. "Turn off your bleedin' telly." |
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| Yet such a prescription was far too drastic for American viewers who continued to risk ISTT even when the Surgeon General required a label on each set. "WARNING" the label read. "TV VIEWING MAY DECREASE THE SIZE AND SCOPE OF HABITUAL VIEWERS." Unchecked, ISTT continued its scourge. |
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| During the 1980s, alternative remedies stirred hope. Homeopathic doctors suggested watching one minute of "The Gong Show" daily. The show's toxic stupidity, they said, would immunize viewers to TV's shrinking effects. Some ISTT sufferers went to Europe to take a drug our FDA refused to approve, a drug called "Books." Alternative cures sent ISTT into remission -- TEMPORARILY -- but soon patients continued to watch and shrink, watch and shrink. |
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| ISTT support groups have called TV an addiction, yet every year, millions of kids take up the habit, putting themselves at risk of becoming permanent mental midgets. Experts say that ISTT will be conquered only when TV is declared a public health problem. |
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| Won't you help today? The holiday season is upon us, exposing viewers to programs of crippling idiocy. Give to the American ISTT Society. Help Americans maintain the size and stature they once enjoyed before TV, the Great Shrinker of Young Adults, entered our living rooms. |
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| Sincerely, |
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| Howdy Doody |
| Honorary Chairman |
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