YourFamilyViewer.com

Yes, here it is.  The premiere post of the yourfamilyviewer.com blog.

The idea behind this blog is to give families the tools they need to help figure what’s on the boob tube and how to manage media in an environment that’s not really geared toward building healthy families.  Nor should they be.

A couple quick defninitions before we go any further.  One is family-safe.  It’s a pretty straightforward description of a show that doesn’t really have anything in it that’s going to make Grandma blush or make Junior ask odd questions, or the rest of us cringe.  I’m looking at several things here: sexuality, violence, commercialism, language and social behavior.  Camp Rock, Disney’s latest, is family safe, if you don’t count promoting the Jonas Brothers as commercialism.

The second definition is family-friendly.  That means everyone in the family should be able to enjoy the program.  There are always exceptions to this – maybe your family really loves SpongeBob SquarePants.  But there are shows that are family-safe that really aren’t very interesting to 8-year-olds, such as some of the PBS documentaries.  And there are some shows that are family-safe, but if you’re over 5, you’re not going to want to watch, such as Raggs.

In fact, speaking of Camp Rock, that is a show that is both family-safe and family-friendly.  And, actually, was pretty decent, quality-wise, too.  Young Mitchie, a talented but shy singer wanna-be, goes to Camp Rock, but as her Mom’s kitchen helper.  She lies to fit in better with the camp rich girls and, of course, it all blows up, but she manages to finally be true to herself and wins the day.

If you weren’t part of the 98 million pre-teens watching it this weekend, don’t worry.  It’s going to repeat all summer long.  If you were, please feel free to comment.  I’d love to get your perspective on it all.

On Monday night, at 8 p.m. (check your local listings) on ABC Family is the second episode of their new series The Middleman.  He’s a super hero fighting all those comic book bad guys.  She gets rooked into being his assistant.  Warning, it is violent, with lots of guns going off and people dying, but relatively bloodless.  Also, some bleeped out language, which was part of the joke – the Middleman is pretty clean cut.  The show is also mostly amusing.  Not laugh out loud funny, but not boring, either.  It should be okay for grade schoolers with parental supervision.

PBS ScienceNOW is one of those shows that’s family-safe, but not necessarily family-friendly, as in the younger members of your family might not be as intrigued.  However, their new season starts on Wednesday, June 25, check your local listings for times.

I do like this series because it does present a lot of fascinating information in a mostly engaging way.  Who knows?  If you can get some of your kids to watch, it might spark and interest in science.

And that’s it for now.  Unless I feel a deep need to rant, I’ll be posting again by Thursday with programming for the weekend.

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