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Making a mountain…out of television
By matt | May 7, 2008
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My friend, Brad, likes to tease me about the fact I don’t have a television. Well, I should amend that…he teases me every time I bring it up by linking to The Onion article: Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn’t Own A Television.
At first, not having a television was a little bit of a thing for me. It was hard adjusting to it, really, because I had used it as a form of entertainment and now I had free time to spend that would otherwise have been consumed with channel surfing.
I don’t find television to be “evil” or anything silly like that. So let’s get that out of the way. I just prefer other forms of entertainment…and to be honest, I have a television I just don’t have it connected up to cable or to an antenna. Thus, I still watch DVD’s but I don’t watch anything that is broadcast.
Thus, when I saw one of the blogs on the Wall Street Journal published an entry about turning off cable TV at their house, I guess I expected more when the title of the entry was “Why We Now Have No TV: And (Kind Of) Like It”.
They say why they don’t have a TV. They don’t say why they like it!
In the comments on my post a few days ago, Walt and Sarah talked about how television can fit into a household and why it can be a good thing. I don’t disagree with these perspectives.
What I didn’t see in the WSJ was why they thought a television-free house was good. Simply subtracting does not necessarily improve a situation. My question: what did they add to their lives once they stopped watching television?
Topics: technology |
May 7th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Love the Onion article - I hadn’t seen that one before.
But it points out one of the things that frustrates me most about the television/no television debate - which is pop culture. Love it or hate it - pop culture references (many of which stem from tv) are connectors. I don’t watch American Idol, I think it’s shit. But everyone in my small small office does, and at lunch, when they’re talkin’ about Paula’s antics, I just can’t take part - and it sucks to be left out of an energetic, funny conversation.
I actually STARTED watching the Bachelor last year to increase my shared references with a friend who is television MAD - mid-70s to current - and I just cannot keep up with her. Luckily 30 Rock’s been our… rock.
So, as a recovering nerdy kid (my parents played Virgil Fox - classical concert organist - records…)
Growing up I was all, “New Kids on the what now? Man, I just LOVE Vivaldi’s 4 seasons - there’s an open air concert in the park at Oberlin, wanna brew sun tea and picnic?”
I look to television to help me freaking connect with people who never thought reading away summer vacation was cool.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
A friend of mine mentioned that he got rid of his TV for a year, and discovered all sorts of free time that he used to pursue other hobbies.
As one of my other friends said, “So instead of watching Old Yankee Workshop and dreaming about building something, you were actually building something.”
May 7th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
It has been over a year since we cancelled cable I think.
We still watch DVDs. In fact, I think a stack of DVDs we have watched through the library so far would easily reach from floor to ceiling (if not back again).
Three week ‘rental’ at zero cost, the ability to renew online and $0.05 late fees? You have to love the library. Ours even has a netflix-esque queue to request them. Let us hope the libraries always remain free.
IPTV is the future though. To keep somewhat current we do catch Lost or the Office in HD streaming online. It kind of seems weird to watch commercials again, but at least so far they are 20 or 30 second blocks rather than the multiple-minute runs for broadcast TV and cable watchers.
You are right though, the ’shared reference’ is a bit of a concern. Once, not that long ago, an overwhelmingly large percentage of America would have all watched last night’s episode of ‘The Honeymooners’ or perhaps later ‘The Tonight Show’. Now there are so many passive and interactive entertainment options that these global connectors are losing power. ‘Have you seen so-and-so’s blog?’, or ‘Did you catch that article on Digg?’ are already making there way into some groups as connection points.
TV is not dead, but the coast-to-coast power days of TheBroadcast and the ThreeMajorNetworks has come and gone–weakened first by the VCR, then by hundreds of cable chanels, Satelite TV, TiVo and now IPTV.
May 7th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Thanks for the reference…hehehe