Effective public action has been blocked in Congress by the broadcast industry. Still, a congressional resolution asking the industry to take action has passed the Senate unanimously and is about to pass the House.

Since there is no way to warn young Americans about the dangers of video violence, National Coalition on Television Violence has launched a TV and advertiser pressure campaign against the two most violent TV series ever produced, Freddy's Nightmares and Friday the 13th. Freddy's features intense torture, rape, the meat-house slaughter of women, cannibalism and the killing of parents; evil wins at the end of each episode. Friday features intensely violent, satanic themes - the serial killing of prostitutes, slow-motion murders, satanic human sacrifices, etc.

NCTV recommends that viewers boycott all programming on stations carrying these two shows. We also recommend writing sponsors to ask that they withdraw their advertising. We are pleased that Campbell Soup has cancelled all future advertising and Coors has cancelled its ads on Freddy's Nightmares. Warner-Lambert and 7-Up, the two lead sponsors, have announced they are reviewing their policies.

NCTV opposes government censorship of TV. However, we ask Americans not to cooperate with the intense promotion of violence. We are following through on the past recommendations of health and education organizations, numerous Christian leaders, including the Pope, and the Federal Communications Commission.

Paramount, Warner, broadcasters and their libertarian supporters would have us sit and watch the destruction of our society. They block educational measures in Congress and demand that we not take individual action against the promotion of intense brutality. We protest. Working together, we can and will force at least the two most hideous TV series off the air.

But with a new decade, television faces its greatest threat - the age of censorship by the organized whiners. The latest shows - Freddy's Nightmares (spun off from the film Nightmare on Elm Street) and Friday the 13th, the Television Show.

The fundamentalists are whining that the shows contain satanism and other anti-religious themes. The psychiatrists are whining that they're bad for the children. And all that whining is reminiscent of the same things people were saying aobut the old horror comics of the 1950s.

The only difference is that, in the '50s, it took a Senate hearing to bully the networks into kowtowing to special interests. In the late '80s, all you need is a bored Michigan housewife with too much time on her hands, a couple of angry letters and, suddenly, you've got a national movement.

Sadly, this pretentiousness behind boycotting the horror shows is also behind the narrow-mindedness that prevents debate on tough issues like abortion. Fear of reprisals, not interesting or successful programming, is to be standard.

The days when television showed a society where children skipped home from school, the dog waited patiently at the door and Mom had a perfect dinner ready just in time for Dad's arrival home from work no longer exist. In fact, they never did. It only happened on shows like Father Knows Best, shows so out of touch with society they've been relegated to cable's Family Channel and Nickelodeon.

What the organized whiners forget is that low ratings are the only boycott television needs. Every television comes equipped with a channel changer and an "off" switch. And if enough people are ignoring a certain show, it will go off the air. But if people are too lazy or too weak to make that decision stick in their own homes, then they have no right to make that decision for the rest of us.