(Newswire.net — February 18, 2015) Thomson, Illinois — The average child in America today spends as many as 55 hours a week watching television and playing video games. Such a frightening statistic has equally frightening consequences, says audio theater producer Bill Heid, who wonders what America would be like if the Founding Fathers had access to such technology and received so much screen time.
“If Patrick Henry or George Washington had 55 hours worth of screen time a week, we would not have a country the way we have it,” Heid said during an interview on KPDQ’s The Georgene Rice Show, broadcast out of Portland, Ore.
To help give parents an alternative to screen time, Heid’s company, Heirloom Audio Productions, produces what he calls “audio movies” – two-hour audio theater CDs featuring all-start casts and special effects that tell about some of history’s greatest heroes.
The latest one, In Freedom’s Cause, recounts the story of William Wallace, who helped lead Scotland to independence from England during the 1300s.
Heirloom Audio’s first project, Under Drake’s Flag, told the story of Sir Francis Drake, the first Englishman to circle the globe. It was nominated for an Audi Award — the “Academy Awards” of audio drama.
“I have been listening to In Freedom’s Cause and I have fallen in love,” Rice said. “This is really well done and it tells a great story very well.”
One of the project’s goals is to put Christ back into history; Wallace and Drake each were men of faith. Another goal is to teach values and character. A third goal: teach children about the source of liberty.
“I think for many of us, because we have been the inheritors of freedom, we just assume it’s something that will always be in place,” Rice said. “We don’t really realize what it costs to win freedom, what it takes to maintain it, and what we are likely to leave to our children and grandchildren if we don’t take it seriously. In Freedom’s Cause really gives us some perspective.”
Audio theater, Heid said, engages a child’s imagination in unique ways that television simply does not.
“There’s such a temptation today for screen time,” Heid said, noting he has 13 grandchildren. “You see pediatric reports and so forth talking about the problems and dangers associated with our children’s brains as they develop and get a lot of screen time. The average child gets about 55 hours a week of screen time. When you spend all that time in front of the screen, your brain starts to shut off because somebody else is doing the heavy lifting – all the imagination work.”
In Freedom’s Cause stars Golden Globe winner Joanne Froggatt (Anna Bates of Downton Abbey), Billy Boyd (Pippin of The Lord Of The Rings), Skandar Keynes (Edmund of The Chronicles of Narnia series), James Cosmo (Campbell, Father Christmas of Braveheart and The Chronicles of Narnia, respectively) and Brian Blessed (Boss Nass and Clayton in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and Tarzan, respectively).
For more information about In Freedom’s Cause, visit InFreedomsCause.com.