Living Without TVs

gosh you make it all sound so idealistic. I just stopped watching most TV in college. I’ll still catch the occasional show on hulu, and have my favorites I like to see (Battlestar Galactica). But it’s got nothing to do with power, politics or family values (hah).

It’s just that most TV is bad. I might as well search for random youtube videos with the kind of quality you’ll find in most TV shows.

I stopped watching television several years ago, and there were several reasons for doing so. The first being that there really is so little original content, this was my initial reason, I was flipping through the 300+ channels we had and there was nothing on that wasn’t either mind-numbingly stupid or I hadn’t already seen a dozen times. After a few months I realized that I didn’t want to watch television any more, most of the programs didn’t appeal to me any more. I began to notice that television was all people ever talked about, they didn’t talk about each other or the weather, just what they were going to watch tonight. Then I began to notice that people had stopped caring about important political issues, and it seems to me that politics at least on television is all about rooting for your favorite team. Now when somebody asks me “Have you seen…?” I tell them that I don’t watch television and they look at me like I am some kind of bug-eyed monster. I find that rather disturbing. Then again I have always preferred working with my hands or reading to television.

“Non-viewers had a greater variety of things that they did with their free time than viewers did,”

Such as letting everyone they meet know that they don’t own tv.

Not a lot to watch and hence, not a lot to miss. An occasional ”House”, ”Psych”, ”Monk” and maybe some news when there’s visuals you can’t get on the net.

I think the problem is that fewer shows are aimed at families. We used to all gather to watch Carol Burnett or All in the Family or Columbo. What family wants to watch Desperate Housewives together?

I think the last time I watched TV on a regular (daily) basis was probably in the late 70s/early 80s. These days I only turn it on if there’s a war.

I don’t abstain from watching television, I just don’t ever seem to turn it on. I waste time on the computer instead.

I haven’t watched telly for years, and every time I’m at someone else’s place and sit in front of one I’m reminded why: because it’s crap.

When I realized that the only thing I watched was movies, I cancelled the cable and just rent movies. No stupid commercials and I can pause when I want.

@ evil pundit:
So you pretty much have it turned on ever since?

I usually watch news after dinner and thats it..
I do actually watch alot of series and movies, but I do so on my PC on my own terms (and without &%&*$ commercials)

TV is *SO* 1993.. =]

I play videos. Who cares about TV? At least with a video game I’m *doing* something, and I control the outcome.

Is it seriously “surprising” to people that some people don’t watch TV by choice? Saying some people don’t bathe by choice would surprise me, but watching TV, a passive hobby activity?

I watch a lot of TV (Maybe 30 hours a week) It’s something I really enjoy and make no apologies for it. Because of my schedule I record almost everything and then watch it at my leisure (This way I can edit commercials, newsbreaks and such) If you don’t watch TV, that’s great, just don’t think that somehow you are more enlightened and intellectually superior because of it. Television isn’t evil, it’s just a diversion like the computer or video games or books (By the way, I read about 20 novels a year also so I’m not illiterate or uneducated either)

I watch tv, but we don’t subscribe to cable and that limits what and when we watch. My wife grew up without a tv in the house, and if it were up to her we wouldn’t have one either. My family was the opposite; the tv was always on, if for nothing other than background noise. As a result, I like to have the tv on while I’m doing other things, but it drives her crazy because if it’s on it consumes her attention. My kids tend to be the same way; if it’s on, they’re glued to it.

One of the new shows that my kids & I enjoy is Wipeout! Funny, funny stuff; especially the hosts.

TwoDragons: Most of the shows we loved have either been canceled, turned cheesy, or the host was killed in a freak stingray accident.

Oh, amen to that! You made me smile and sigh in sadness at the same time.

It’s not that I don’t have TV, but I don’t watch one.

I think the problem may be in how people define ‘watching TV’. If you mean, do I sit down at the scheduled broadcast hour and spend half or more of the program time watching advertisements for the 3 shows I do take time to watch? Well, the answer is no.

Do I use my laptop and iPhone to watch shows when I want and commercial free? Hell yes. Do I watch shows from overseas with *usually* half-decent subtitles (anime, Kdrama, etc.) which are not delayed, dubbed, and repackaged to suit the ‘typical US audience/western tastes’? Hells yes.

And yes, programming today is so poor there are not enough words to express the vacuous, banal, steaming s***pile which continues to ooze out of Los Angeles.

I used to watch loads of TV when I was in advertising. Along absorbing every other type of media I could. This habit stuck even after I left advertising though. Looking at media as a whole, it starts to become one big piece of art to me with many different layers to explore.

Anyway, land lady cut off the cable in the spring, and I decided not to put it back up on my own dime. Thought I’d see how well I’d fair without it.

My life and the way I conceptualize some things has definitely changed without the constant exposure to advertising. I find I’m much more susceptible to an ad when I DO come across one now.

Still, now I find myself spending too much time at the computer, surfing and watching tv on it instead. My attention span is nil because of the over load of media choices in one spot.

Personally, I’m going to bring the tv cable back. At least then I did a multitude of other chores and respectable activities while it was on in the background.

my tv blew up 3 years ago and i’m to cheap to buy a new one. too much reality crap on any way.

I work in television, and i love it. People watching television helps me support my family.

No TV by choice…
With more and more streaming programs / videos on Internet, I feel I’m back to square one

I have lived for the past two years without a TV and I love it. The problem now is internet, in every sense better and more addictive for information freaks like me.

So many things wrong with that article… I should first call out the irony that the article itself is of the “sound byte” variety – it’s practically insubstantial. Why? Because the people reading it are expecting short “TV-sized” bytes.

That being said, the article doesn’t make clear whether:

1) No TV = no physical display devices in the home.
2) No TV = Display device(s) present, but no cable / satellite service; however playback devices (DVD player, VCR, game console, etc) present.
3) No TV = ditto #2, add OTA antenna
4) No TV = ditto #3, subtract playback devices

Each of the above options entails entirely different things, as some commenters have already stated. It’s also bothersome that most “intellectuals” who claim not to own / watch TV take the view that the lumpenmasse who do are somehow less intelligent or educated than they.

Why is discovery of new facts or frontiers only acceptable if it comes from dead trees or classrooms? In today’s information-saturated world, you’d have to be a total Luddite to still maintain the fiction that TV = network OTA broadcasts only. BBC (and the BBC America variant), PBS (in all affiliate permutations), Discovery, TLC, Science Channel, History Channel, etc etc etc – each of these channels offer well-produced and – let’s face it and accept the fact – easily-digestible content which serve to expand a person’s knowledge and view of the world. And who’s to say that, once piqued, that same person couldn’t go out and read more about a given subject?

To paraphrase a famous archaeologist’s father, “it tells me that Goose-stepping morons like these should try watching TV instead of burning them!”

Well, I have a tv, but it only goes on when we (me and my best friend) want to watch a movie or a dvd (documentaries sometimes). As far as those people wondering what it is that we DO if not sitting passively in front of the screen, well, for instance, we are working on shows for our theater company (rehearsals or performances almost every night) or between shows, writing/editing/marketing (I have 3 free-lance jobs that involve editing or writing or suchlike), cooking fabulous meals, reading books, volunteering for a variety of non-profits, meditating, playing with the cats — in other words, engaged in real life (well, I guess you can call theatre “real” life — at least it’s got live people to interact with) instead of just being a sponge, just sitting there looking at shadows on a screen — illusions instead of reality. Come on people, it’s not snobbery — I used to watch a bit, especially when my husband was dying, and I would keep him company as he watched the Food Network and Chuck Norris (go figure!), but after he died, I realized that there were just too many other fascinating activities luring me away from the tube. I’m not up on a high horse, just honestly not really interested in what’s happening in that world. Which is ironic, since one of my writing projects was a sitcom I developed with a friend (that never went anywhere since neither of us had any Hollywood connections). I read the newspaper, listen to NPR and surf the web for information, look at clips on YouTube sometimes (we love MadTV), but haven’t the patience, I guess, to just sit — I’m always thinking of something else I should be doing, so tend to just do it and never even think of turning on the tv. We actually were planning to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, but just are not in the habit of turning on the tv, so missed it. Oh well, no big deal. Ephemera is all it is. Not anything lasting or significant, really, if you are honest about it. Even good tv is pretty insubstantial compared to art. Is it possible for anything on tv to even approach art? I don’t know. Maybe something on PBS occasionally. A great documentary (but we tend to get those from Netflix so we can watch them at our leisure). Mostly, not. I don’t plan to get a digital converter box (although maybe for the 3 times annually we DO turn on the box — for the Tonys, the Oscars, the Emmies)? We’ll see.

I don’t watch TV either, but not because I have any sort of objection to it. I just fell out of the habit while living in a house without any reliable reception. I grew up as an avid tv watcher but life without tv isn’t a big change at all.

Whoopdi-do. Some of us finished undergrad courses before, and inclusive of, watching tee-vee. What does that say about your focusing faculties? Not to mention one’s lack of fiscal priorities by allocating such sums for programming.

Just because you were incapable of making good decisions when it came to divvying up your time and money with tv in the loop doesn’t mean other people can’t.

Is it odd to have a 42″ Plasma TV but not have a cable connection to it? All I wanted it for was movies and for displaying photos.

I have just given up on Cox’s DVR. Pretty much useless when compared to even a TIVO. I’m hoping to create a box which uses Sage or Myth and use it as a video jukebox.

Now all i need are a few terabyte raid drive arrays. (that don’t drown out the TV)

I stopped watching TV about the time my kids started. They’d beg me not to come into the room because I’d cause the program they were watching to be interrupted by commercial breaks. As they got older, they begged me not to come in because the DVD would start skipping or freeze up as soon as I sat down.

I just gave it up, although I do miss COPS reruns.

I’m with TVorNotTV. I watch Lost, Supernatural, and the Simpsons on TV, but since I don’t have cable I watch like ten other shows on the Internet and DVD. Does this mean that I only watch 2.5 hours of TV a week? Of course not.