N. Idaho families see benefits from less TV

MOSCOW, Idaho (AP) — Karl Erhard-Hudson knows exactly how being television-free has affected his family.

"It's made it so I'm not in front of the TV whenever I get the chance," the 9-year-old Moscow resident said. "Then I have to go and play outside if I'm bored."

Karl's mom, KarlaRose Erhard-Hudson, smiled at him.

"That's a good thing, right?" she asked.

The Erhard-Hudson family — Karl, KarlaRose, dad Joseph and daughter Jamie, 2 — is among several on the Palouse who have given up cable and satellite television in favor of a more screen-free lifestyle.

KarlaRose said it was not a big decision for her family to turn off the tube. In fact, they've never had television, except for watching movies and buying cable for a month every two years to watch the Olympics.

"I don't understand how anybody has time to watch TV," she said. "I guess it's easy for us because it wasn't a matter of weaning ourselves off it."

KarlaRose is an administrative assistant at the University of Idaho physics department and Joseph is the IT manager for the Moscow Food Co-op. When the family isn't busy with work or school, they like to go to their cabin in Montana with friends, swim at the aquatic center or play games.

The family reads together every day — right now, Karl and Joseph are going through the "Lord of the Rings" series. Karl loves playing with Legos and playing outside in the family's yard.

They do have a TV, but it's only for watching DVDs and videos. KarlaRose said nothing would sway them to hook up to cable.

"This way we can choose very explicitly what we pay attention to or not," Joseph said.

Barbara Brock, a recreation management professor at Eastern Washington University, recently published "Living Outside the Box: TV-free Families Share Their Secrets." She interviewed 500 families in 43 states about their experiences.

Brock and her husband, Vern, stopped watching TV when their children, Sydney and Adam, were toddlers.

As they talked to other families, "we realized being TV-free was very strange," Brock said.

Now that her children are teenagers, they have full, busy lives that have never included TV.

"They really have lots of hobbies, lots of interests," Brock said. "If we had a TV we don't know what we'd give up to watch it."