Cosy encounters of the Spielbergian kind

The director has banned his kids from watching the news, preferring to deliver it himself

Tom Cruise has forbidden his children to watch more than a few hours' television a week and has urged them to read books instead. In this, he has followed the example of his friend and neighbour Steven Spielberg, who has laid down similar restriction for his kids.

I don't know how the dinner-table chat goes in the Cruise household. But I imagine it's something like this: "Dad, can we please see some TV, please, please?" "Hmm. I'm not keen. What's on?" "Well, there's a movie, Moulin Rouge, followed by a programme on celebrity divorces. Can we, dad, can we?" "How many times do I have to tell you – TV is bad for you. Now go and find a good book."

Steven Spielberg is taking an even more draconian line. He has banned his kids from watching the news. To many British children this would qualify him as the ideal father. But, again, it must make for strange conversations chez Spielberg. "Hey, I thought I told you to turn that filth off. If it's not violence in Iraq, it's sex and former British prime ministers. Can't you watch a nice clean movie about people being eaten by sharks or a boy travelling back in time and being seduced by his own mom?"

Cruise, who adopted two children with Nicole Kidman in the mid-1990s, was quoted at the weekend as saying: "I don't really like my kids to watch that much television. They are allowed about three and a half hours a week, but only if they are doing well in school. We're focused on reading, a lot of reading."

Spielberg, who has five children, says: "One hour of TV a day, but only if they have met the conditions. They have to do their homework, do their chores, finish dinner and get into their cosy clothes. After they take their bath and after they are in their cosy clothes they get to watch TV for an hour. I do not let them watch the news because it is much more uncensored than it was when I was growing up, and things are so frightening right now that I like the news to come from me. That way I can reassure them that they are safe."

Now that's a nightly bulletin I'd like to hear, the news from Steven Spielberg. "OK, kids, got your cosy clothes on? Here goes: they say there's a strange object hurtling towards the earth; but my bet is it will contain lovable green children itching to be friends with guys like you."

Cruise and Spielberg may or may not see the irony in making their millions out of screen entertainment, and then telling their children not to watch TV. But they are not alone in rationing TV for their children. Madonna has pledged "minimal TV" for her little ones, while the British-born actress Naomi Watts, best known for her lead role in David Lynch's latest film, Mulholland Drive, says: "I will not allow them to watch anything but World Cup soccer on it." That's bordering on the sadistic. "See that TV set in the corner? You can turn it on again in three years and 10 months."

The average American child watches 25 hours of TV a week, four more than the average British child. Earlier this year a Washington-based organisation, TV-Turnoff, persuaded 6.5 million people to switch off their sets for an entire week. Children are said to have made "remarkable gains at school and in social relations". There have been extra sales of Monopoly and Scrabble too, sales that were pushed with shameless irony in TV advertising campaigns, urging families to "play together" once a week.

The various lobbies urging switch-off make a confused entity. There are the religious groups worried about moral degradation, the liberals opposed to the impact of advertising on young people, the Spielbergians who think the news could harm the minds of the young, the serious-minded who think that everything apart from the news could harm the minds of the young. But maybe the reasons don't matter. If a family evening in America genuinely is turning into dinner, followed by homework, followed by Scrabble, followed by conversation, let's not knock it. Who knows? It could even catch on here.

At least we could have some public debate on how much TV children should watch; whether we should follow a new American idea of cutting out an evening a week, so they don't get hooked on the soaps; and whether the BBC couldn't do more to mix cultural and educational programmes with the soaps and cop dramas.

But don't expect it to be plain sailing. Reports from America says some people have experienced "withdrawal behaviours" including tantrums and cheating.

Perhaps Cruise and Spielberg are already planning a film about a boy who has been secretly watching the news on a friend's TV. He is gradually nursed through his withdrawal symptoms and becomes Monopoly champion. The Cruise and Spielberg clans can all attend the premiere, of course. Curiously, for all their strictures on TV watching, neither Tom nor Steven has said anything about not going to the movies.

d.lister@independent.co.uk