We have an elderly parent with dementia living with us. We turn it on as a baby-sitter, as it engages him somewhat (or he falls asleep). I hate the sound, and have invested in noise-cancelling headphones.
Hopefully we will get the situation rectified, and I can go back to quiet (or music).
Nuts, and depressing. 'round here, the TV is on only if someone is actively watching. It’d make me crazy just to have it going for the sake of noise.
Include me, very much, in Team “Drives me mad – utterly distracting – why have it on if no attention is being paid to it?”
I tend to feel very uncharitable – and sometimes, unjustifiably so – toward people whose standard operational procedure is perpetually to have the TV on as “background”: am apt instinctively to classify them as not very bright / not very worthwhile members of society.
Hate the “must have TV” thing. I hate that they’re on everywhere - waiting rooms, Post Office, restaurants, even stores. At home I’m happy to watch a bit in the evenings, but no, no, no to the TV as background noise.
The only exception to that is if there’s some big news event happening (scary weather, the Boston bombing, major elections etc) and I have house chores to do, then I’ll leave it on to check in as I putter around.
I will leave the radio on sometimes though, usually set to NPR or a local station that plays a good eclectic music mix.
eta - We went to look at a property with a Realtor a while ago, and the TV was on in the house so loudly that it was hard to talk near it. I hunted around and found the remote and turned it down because it was making me seriously cranky. I did remember to turn it back up when we left 
Not only do I hate having a TV on when I’m not actively watching it, I’ll mute any commercials instantly. It drives me nuts to hear advertising, and I can’t understand why people permit it.
I agree. I hate that. I am lucky enough not to be friends with, or be related to, anyone who keeps their TV constantly on at home, but I am sure that would be far worse.
Without really meaning to, my wife and I have become “those people” - the kind without any TV in the house. It started off as laziness. We got what we wanted off the internet, and didn’t need any actual TV anywhere. However, I have to say that as we had a baby, and that baby turned out to be autistic, and is now a toddler, I’m very very glad we don’t have a TV. I see the way she shuts off and tunes out whenever there’s a show on, and I can’t help but feel that it’s really good for her to not be constantly bombarded with television.
As a side effect, we now find the whole TV in the background thing massively distracting, and have come to loathe advertising with a passion.
I feel your pain. I’ve been on every side of this, too.
There was a time that I liked to have news or weather on the tv, while doing other things around the house. Back when 24hr news was a newish thing. My husband is, much like some already mentioned, he’ll have two or more tvs going when I come in from work, all in different rooms! So he can meander about, it seems.
Then we added caregiving for a bedridden loved one into our home. Their tv was essential in keeping them distracted from being bedridden entirely. So that tv was on 6am - 12 midnight. Everyday. For 6yrs. This, in addition to the hammerhead husband with the three TVs on! And there were many times when it was battle of the TVs, so one could hear over the other! Those were very stressful times, indeed. Not until it was over did I stop to consider just how much that constant sound was contributing to the chaos.
When we regularly went to his sisters for Christmas, the tv was on all day. Every time. They had two boys so it was all sports all the time, even as we sat down to eat, you could hear it on in the other room. In all their Christmas pictures you can see the tv on! Yikes.
We don’t have so many TVs anymore, so that’s no longer an issue, we are no longer caregiving, so that’s no longer an issue. Plus, we no longer attend Christmas at his sisters, (and when they came here I’d always drape something over the tv so everyone got the idea). So now it’s a different world and much lovelier, in my opinion.
He still likes the tv on, but now only when he’s actually watching it. And it’s much easier to take since I can spend most days alone in my silent home! I find it very calming.
I despise the Talking Lamp. It heartens me to read the like-minded posts here.
Talking Lamp, I like that!
We only have one TV. That seems to be a rare thing these days too.
I am amazed! I have never experienced it, not with my in-laws (all now deceased) nor with my children and grandchildren none of whom seem to watch much TV. It would drive me nuts. I do like to have pleasant music on though. But that is no longer easy to find on the radio since the Conservative government we have had for years is out to destroy the CBC.
I like to have the Weather Channel on 24/7, either that, Barney or Teletubbies.
I haven’t had broadcast TV in about 10 years. I watch movies and streaming stuff, but my time in front of a big screen is pretty deliberate. When I’m in an airport or waiting room with a TV blaring – particularly news and talk shows – I’m so unaccustomed to it, it’s like an assault.
Okay, it not really like an assault. More like a cattle prod to the nervous system. I’m with you, OP.
No, I like the TV on if I’m not reading or sleeping. Turned down low if I’m not actually watching it. I don’t see how it’s any different from listening to the radio all the time or walking around with headphones on. But you seem to really like it quiet as their constant talking also gets on your nerves. That might bother me, too. (Well, actually I’d think the last-ditch resort of reading road signs is funny and would occasionally do it with my spouse throughout the year as an inside joke.)
But how do you know they’re not trying to fill a, to them, uncomfortable silence? Maybe they don’t think they have anything important enough to you for them to say. Maybe they enjoy the visit about as much as you do.
I can’t imagine the resentment you must have built up, wasting every vacation at some place where you don’t want to be. And they won’t even let you stay at a motel…
Really, why not just find some kind of compromise that would be more pleasant all around?
There’s very little about TV I don’t find unsettling. As someone who is exposed to “TV” very episodically, the changes across time tend to jump out at me. There was a long stretch - perhaps two decades - where I did not more than glimpse broadcast, mainstream TV for many months at a time. The changes, almost wholly negative, were literally shocking.
As a family, we watched TV only with some deliberation - Oh, Brady Bunch is on, let’s watch that - and off when it was over. Almost never just “on and watching” for hours. I had a good friend in high school and found it odd and disturbing that the TV in their house never went off - it was not unusual to stop by after school (riding home with him) and find the TV murmuring along to either an empty house or because someone was upstairs taking a shower. That was my first encounter with a household that left the box on all the time.
However, my mother increasingly came to leave the TV on pretty much all waking (and most snoozing) hours. Our family house was very quiet - quiet street, quiet neighbors, thick soundproof walls - and she said the silence drove her batty. Hence the babble box. My sister (a non-TV watcher) took over the house… and soon started leaving the TV on all waking hours, too.
I still don’t grasp the mindset that thinks having a TV mutter and babble away in the background - sometimes the distant background, rooms away - is a necessity, or even tolerable, but I know from personal experience and from Mrs. B’s more considerable experience in family homes that it’s somewhere between very common and universal. It mystifies me deeply.
But then, I used to think a line from Max Headroom - “An off switch. She’ll get years for that.” - was funny.
I agree with all the posters above that TV-as-perpetual-background is loathsome.
**Becky **just above has hit the OP’s real point: The TV in his case is a symptom. The underlying problem is not having a reasonable compromise approach to vacation time.
Yes.
Whenever I visit my parents, I have to prepare for the annoying THREE TV sets they leave on all the time. The one in their bedroom, the one in the living room, and the one in the kitchen. All blaring at full blast, since my mother is losing her hearing. The acoustics of the house are such that all the noise is magnified in the upstairs bedrooms. So my dreams are punctuated by various theme songs or laugh tracks.
I fall in the middle. If I’m off work, I’ll have it on CNBC or Bloomberg to keep an eye on the markets. I’ll often have a baseball game on that I’m half paying attention to. Before cable news became so horrible, I used to keep that on as well.
I can’t stand loud tvs on all the time, especially if they’re constantly turned to Outrage of the Week cable news shows.
I can’t stand it. I don’t even own a TV anymore
It would drive me nuts to have a TV on all the time. I find I don’t like very many TV shows, so maybe that’s part of it?
Yeah, I’m not happy about that either. The government destroying the CBC, that is.