TV definitely affects the brain, thought processes, and emotions. Remember several years ago a children's cartoon on Japanese TV affected several hundreds of children - some got epilepsy type attacks, I can't remember everything that happened.
If someone doesn't watch TV for a long time and then watches it, it's a huge, huge shock to the brain, eyes and ears. And so many kids are immersed in it hours a day.
Kids are way better off with no TV at all.
>>Kids are way better off with no TV at all.<<
Spot on!
Actually, it's this same principle that consistitutes part of the testing for epilepsy (the portion that uses strobe lighting). We have used a colored light therapy for our son's autism (had a calming effect, actually) using a similar approach, and finally used a passive non-cognitive computer-modulated EEG-based neurobiofeedback therapy that marvelously helped his neutrotransmitter levels to the point where he was much less "triggerable" for the temporal lobe seizure-based tantrums he (and we) suffered, based on the same mechanism. You can learn more about this type of therapy in connection with Dr. Len Ochs on the internet. This therapy also induces vasodilation to the brain, which I suspect is where the actual benefit derives. It turns out that this approach, because it's gentle (if done correctly), is also homeopathic in its effect. It turned out, incidentally, from testing at Lawrence Livermore Lab, that the therapeutic power wasn't even the (very low) lights (LEDs) in the goggles; it was the electromagnetic radiation (good kind) coming off the (grounding?) lead.
One important principle we learned, though: less is better, and the brain is highly sensitive to input, preferring quieter stimulation and resisting "loud" stimulation. That is why sensory integration works better than sensorimotor integration in overcoming disabilities; it's quite powerful because it's more gentle.