Well, lemme see. I have not had a TV in any place I have lived since May 1990. Since then I have of course watched some TV, while visiting friends, background in pubs and the like. For a while in the early 90’s I kept track. Then I watched about 2 to 4 hours a month. Since 1994 when I moved to a different city I have watched less than an hour a month.
d’ugh
I’m with lesa, I like TV. I’ll watch just about any thing, but mostly sports.
The longest I have gone without TV is about a week when I went camping as a kid.
When I was first divorced many years ago when my daughters were two, four and six years old, we didn’t have a television for nearly a year (got one when I got my tax return). I read books to them every evening, and they played together and with their friends for other entertainment.
On evenings when imthjckaz isn’t here, sometimes the television doesn’t get turned on at all, but I am finding more shows I am interested in since he has moved in here.
I could go forever and ever and ever, if you’ll allow the single exception of The Simpsons.
The longest I went was a year in the appartment I lived in last year.
I would have liked something to watch while eating dinner, since i had no one to eat with and it seemed strange.
The only thing I missed was The Simpsons.
The TV lives in the basement at my house & is turned on once a week, on Sunday evenings to watch Futurama, King of the Hill, & the Simpsons. (Except during football season, when it is also on Sunday during the day & sometimes Monday nights as well.) In the summer, when the cartoons are reurns & there’s no football, I don’t watch it at all. (We watch DVDs on the computer at least once a week, though.)
When it was in the living room, it would just be on most of the time even if no one was actively watching what was on. Now that it’s in the basement & you actually have to make an effort to watch TV, though, it just stays off most of the time.
I last turned on the idiot box in September of 1994. Except for shell, I think that makes me the longest time without the boob tube. Occasionally, I’ll be in the stuck in same place as a TV, like when I’m at the Mother-in-Law’s condo, and then I get this queasy sensation of sickness, of something completely vile assaulting my eyes and hears. I usually go outside and sit on the porch for fresh air and calmness. Yeah, it is probably psychosomatic, but I lose nothing by never watching TV.
I watch maybe one or two movies per year on the VCR, mostly because Mrs. P likes movies so much, but I usually regret throwing time down the toilet on the Hollywood fare after it’s over. Foreign, classic, or documentary movies are more palatable, but then again I’m an odd duck with peculiar tastes. If I never saw a movie again, I wouldn’t weep. Usually when Mrs. P get into her movie mood, especially the chick flick mood, I just let her watch alone.
I went without a television for a couple of years once, it was amazing how much stuff(work) I got done.
But (as I don’t buy newspapers) I got a bit cut off from the world; the Bank of England introduced a radically different design for the £5 note and the first I knew of it was when my boss handed me one to go out and buy some tools, I laughed and handed it back, thinking he had given me a foreign note. :o
When I was single one of the questions that people asked when they came over was “where’s the t.v?”
I had one. I kept it in the bookcase and only took it out to watch the occasional hockey game, in black and white.
I didn’t miss it at all and this was long before I discovered the wonder of the internet.
I read a lot more in those days.
So far almost four years, ever since I got divorced. Actually, people feel sorry for me & I have been given a couple, but they sit in the garage & then I give them away.
Just can’t be bothered with it, even when I had one in the house I would never turn it on, though I would watch interesting things with someone else.
There just seems something weird to me about sitting all by myself & watching a television. Obviously I’m in the minority though!
I’d have to think about it. We’re probably going on two and a half years, since the TV died.
Since then, family members have offered us TVs twice, including my mother, who offered me her set as she was dying of cancer.
We turned off the set it because my son with ADD would go crazy after watching several hours of it. He’d also lose bowel control because he wouldn’t go to the bathroom while it was on. His behavior improved immensely once the idiot box was gone.
Now, I must confess, there’s a TV on sometimes in the newsroom, plus I have Net access a lot. But it’s a weird feeling to know that there have been whole series that have come and gone without my knowing. As a kid, I used to live for the season-opening edition of TV Guide, because it would list ALL the new shows, and the changes on the old shows. Used to pour over it like the Talmud.
Lately, the only time I saw an entire show was in the ER awaiting the results of some heart tests. Saw “Drew Carey” and part of “That '70s Show”.
But our drought will end within the year. We’ll take a chunk of money and buy a HDTV wide-screen monster and a DVD player. Probably won’t get cable, however. That way, my wife and I can watch movies when the kids are asleep. The kids will get their Disney fix, and a Playstation 2 or similiar box (for the kids, of course! :D)
But the kids will never get a TV for their room (which I think is an insane idea anyway), nor an Internet connection (apart from limited sessions on the home’s computer). And regular doses of Mad Magazine, Consumer Reports and Monty Python to help give them a proper classical education on our culture.
Haven’t watched since the middle of May.
I was away at college for a year. When I came back, the TV wasn’t working. (Understand that this set is about 15 years old.) It’s amazing how little I miss it. The only show that I really like is The Simpsons. Other than that, I just watch when there’s nothing better to do.
Maybe a month.
I like TV. I leave it on almost all the time.
If it weren’t for the daily B5 reruns, I could survive without it easily. But as it is, there is no way you are getting my cable away from me without my being very very dead first!
I have been without TV since February 1993.
I do not miss it one bit.
Although I own a TV, it’s only hooked up to my VCR. No reception whatsoever, and it’s been like that for 7 years.
Whenever I do see TV at a friend’s house, I’m amazed at hour inane it’s become. Much worse than I remember from when I did watch TV.
You zombie thread resurrector… you!
Depends on what you mean by “TV.” I haven’t had cable for the last… 6 years I think. I haven’t watched broadcast TV (except maybe once or twice coincidentally at someone else’s house) in that time. After about the first two years, you wonder why you ever paid for that crap.
I do still use my TV for video games and watching DVDs. About one night a week for video games, one night a month for movies.
I was totally TV-less for about a year, about a year back. I really didn’t notice. I had two roommates and I still had my computer, so there was plenty to occupy me.
I do use my computer and internet connection a LOT. I think my mass of leisure time is spent on my computer. That’s what substitutes for TV, really. If my net connection goes off for some reason I find myself resorting to the video games and movies a lot more often. If I had no internet connection I think I’d probably get cable again out of sheer boredom.
-Ben
Quite a while, actually. I went a full year, about 3 years ago, without even turning on the TV. I even had cable disconnected. Now, still without cable, I only watch 3 or 4 shows a week.
I am, however, considering getting cable back for the SciFi channel, Discovery, TLC, etc. I’m really hesitating, though because I’m afraid I won’t have the will power to limit myself to those channels.
I watch two shows a week, plus I tape DS9 for my ST library. I don’t usually watch it while I’m taping it. I like my two shows, otherwise, I could easily leave the TV off for the rest of the week. I’m not a fanatic about not watching tv, but I do believe that it tends to take up too many hours that I’ll never get back.
I’m rather like TroubleAgain in that I have family members that watch a lot of tv. I used to find myself watching it a lot more than I wanted to, simply because it was on, but now I think I’ve pretty much learned to ignore it. Mind you, that is how I got stuck on Survivor, but that’s another story.
I did once go a year and a half without tv. I owned one, but I didn’t have cable, the broadcast stations weren’t coming in, and I couldn’t be bothered to see if that could be fixed. We would occasionally rent a VCR to watch movies, but otherwise lived without tv quite happily. A year later, we also voluntarily lived without cable for six months when money was tight. I didn’t miss it, although I did go to my friends house to catch the finale of Seinfeld.
Having the tv on all day drives me nuts! When I manage to get everyone out of the house, the first thing I do is turn off that awful background noise! I feel like it’s always on! I’ve trained my kids to turn it off when the weather is nice, and do something else.
I must have done something right. Although my older kids have my old tv with cable in their room, they seem to use it for gaming systems 90% of the time, and don’t watch much tv.
And of course, the obligatory Onion link.