I don’t have a TV and neither do any of my chums, so the only time I ever see one is when walking by the bars on the main street of my town. I have watched, all in all, about ten minutes worth this month. I watched loads as a kid and can honestly say that I don’t miss it a damn bit.
I think TV rots my brain. I watched it for a few hours last month after the attacks and I don’t believe that did me much good either.
Do you like TV?
I’d considered posting this in Great Debates but I don’t think it’s all that great of a debate, at least not great enough to be considered a “Great Debate”.
Mmmmm … TV good.
What part of Afghanistan do you live in?
I’m with the poster. I used to watch TV a lot as a kid…mostly cartoons. And occasionally, I still do happen to catch a few since my roommates own a television.
But on the whole…I stopped watching while in my Junior year of highschool, and don’t really miss it. Books are more entertaining…and video games are more interactive.
Amen!
I don’t own one, I don’t want one.
When I was in university I got my parent’s old one. It collected dust in a locker.
I used to watch tv when visiting my friends or family. Not anymore, really. My total tv viewing for the last 3 months: 0.
I don’t miss it. (Well, maybe the Simpsons from time to time.)
Anecdote: In one of the media theory classes I once took in university, we had to log our media input for a week. I came up with a grand total of 30 minutes of tv, gleaned at some friend’s place. The professor publicly questioned my honesty, claiming my results were unrealistic.
Every minute wasted watching tv is a minute I could be wasting on the Internet. 
Gotta admit. There are few more wasted hours than those spent watching television.
Lady Chance and I have one. And occasionally watch a movie with the DVD player. But it’s rarely used otherwise. Baseball games make up the majority of time.
For about 4 years in the mid-90s we just stopped having one. We caught an announcement about the end of ‘National Turn Off Your TV Week’ and realized we’d actually been doing that for a month. So we chucked it.
The the Cubs made the playoffs in 1998. Oof. I was helpless.
So now we have one, but it doesn’t do much.
Used to watch a ton of TV. My mom and I would watch Star Trek (TOS) reruns seven o’clock every weekday night until they went off ABC. The whole family watched Star Trek the Next Generation together for most of its 7 year run. When I was younger I was big into a lot of PBS programming; Nature, Nova, The Frugal Gourmet, Wild America, any National Geographic specials.
Entering my teens I watched sitcoms, cartoons, pretty much whatever was on.
These days I don’t watch it at all. For a while I was living with some friends and we got cable, and I would watch The Daily Show when it was on, and if I was home during the day there’s a station that was playing like 3 hours a day of MAS*H reruns.
I pop in the occasional movie, but I just don’t find a whole lot that I actually am interested in on TV. I’ve even stopped watching the Simpsons.
Also, I’ll agree with jovan that “every minute wasted watching tv is a minute I could be wasting on the internet,” although I don’t have an internet connection at home yet.
I have a TV because I have a wife and a PS2. That’s pretty much it.
It’s not the shows on TV that I don’t like (though I don’t like most of them) so much as just the act of watching TV. It’s just not how I like to spend my free time. If I watch two hours of TV in a row, I get angry with myself, yet I have no problem with goofing on the computer for twice that length of time. And it’s not like when I’m not watching TV I’m reading Proust or working on my opera or anything, so it’s not a snobbery issue.
Once I got my first computer, back in 1984, TV watching became a thing of the past for me. I found playing with the computer to be far more interesting and rewarding. When I went off to college I didn’t even bring a TV for a long time. I finally got one because a girlfriend complained that I didn’t have one. I had just gotten out of the habit of watching TV and never really had one around.
There’s usually only one show I watch regularly at the time, and currently it’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. I’m not at all interested in anything involving doctors, cops, or lawyers, so that rules out 50% of TV, and not finding most sitcoms funny rules out the other 40%. Even shows I do find funny or entertaining when I happen to see them I won’t go out of my way to watch. It’s just not my thing.
As a result, I’m really hard on the shows I do watch, and have little tolerance for them sucking. Back when “The X-Files” was my show of choice, I dumped it in season five (I think) after the stupid conspiracy arc had completely destroyed any semblance of reality the show ever had. Currently Buffy is testing my limits. I guess I see it that if I’m going to give up an hour of something I enjoy more than watching TV to watch TV, I want to make sure it’s worth it to me.
I don’t care for TV either glowbug, and quit being a serious watcher about 20 years ago. There may be a few programs that aren’t boring, insulting or insipid but since I live in a TV wasteland (can’t receive any channels), I haven’t seen them.
When I was a kid, even though I read a lot and was hardly a couch potato, the thought of TV deprivation struck terror in my wee heart.
Now, though I have nothing against TV in general and I’m absolutely do not feel superior to people who enjoy a lot of TV watching, I just can’t find much that I like. I started watching Buffy on FX recently and I try to catch the local news each night, plus there’s The Simpsons now and then, so I still log two to three hours a day. Still, during most of the non-Buffy time I’m on line and barely paying attention.
But I like having a TV around, I can’t see ever shutting it off for good. Sometimes there’s cool stuff on, despite all the crap.
I have a TV (a big screen with surround sound- woot!), but we watch movies on it on VHS. I got rid of TV in Jan of 2001, and I don’t really miss it much. I’ll admit that I enjoy Court TV and TV Land, but I watch that when I babysit my neices. The local news is horrible and alarmest, the network coverage of the WTC/Pentagon/PA crisis was awful, and I’m glad I wasn’t tempted to get my information there. (I listened to NPR for my news)
While I occasionally enjoy TV, I find my life is much nicer without it. I do have a small black and white TV that I watch emergency news on (it only gets 1 channel) for weather and local stuff in the winter. I also watch football at a bar or a friends house on Sunday, usually.
That’s it!
Zette
I don’t own a TV, but my roommate has one, so there is one in the dorm. I haven’t watched it since the 11th. When I’m at Gunslinger’s, we’ll watch TV - well, let’s put it this way, the TV will be on. He might look at it but I don’t watch it that much. If I didn’t have a television I really would not care.
dont have one. dont like em. baseball is best on the radio. the sdmb is vastly more entertaining. ive never seen seinfeld or friends or buffy or ally mcbeal or the new star treks. and i dont feel as if ive suffered for it.
I’ve gotta jump on the no TV band wagon. ‘Feh’ I say to TV.
A literalist might accuse the monstrosity sitting in my living room of being a TV, but it’s just a PS2 monitor. Never has a broadcast signal been displayed upon its virgin screen.
Just a question, for all the TV-haters (or, at least, TV-avoiders):
Do you also avoid movies, stage plays, ballet, opera, and other forms of “sit there and take it” entertainment? If yes, OK. But if not, why?
I’m not asking this to be difficult. I’m asking because I seriously can’t see the difference between a well-written, well-acted, well-directed, and well-conceived television show (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Sopranos, and The West Wing all come to mind), and a similarly well-executed movie.
Is the fact that the screen is small really so significant when judging the quality of the art (and yes, I submit that television can be art)?
I used to watch TV, but haven’t bothered much for over a year. There are a few shoes I like (Farscape and Junkyard Wars in particular) that I’ll watch if I remember to and aren’t doing anything else - maybe one episode a month.
I also can’t stand opera, ballet, or stage plays. It takes a lot to get me out to a movie.
What do I do instead? I read a lot. And I build fun dangerous toys.
storyteller0910, nope I don’t make any special effort to avoid ‘sit there and take it’ entertainment as a class. I’ll probably watch 1-2 movies a month, and average maybe 0.16 plays a month. TV, when I’ve had it, usually sucks up more time due to the combination of its convenience and my low willpower.
My reason for avoiding TV isn’t that I can’t stand being passively entertained, it’s a benefit vs. cost question. Sure there are some good TV shows out there (I’d like to append The Simpsons to your list), but I’ve found that those on local stations are few and far between and don’t fit my schedule particularly well. Cable is better in this regard, but still not worth $20-$40 a month. The breaks for ads in TV programming don’t enhance the experience either. At least in the movies there’s only one block of ads at the beginning to tune out (and product placement but that’s not as disruptive).
storyteller0910, no, I don’t actively avoid passive entertainment. Then again, I don’t actively avoid television, either. I just don’t seek those things out, and thus rarely, if ever, watch them.
I was just saying the other day that if it wasn’t for sports, The West Wing and Star Trek (TOS and TNG) I could do without TV.
Not all that long ago, I used to be vigilant about “my shows”…I kept up with like 3 soap operas and all sorts of prime time programming that I wouldn’t let myself miss. I would tell my friends, “Don’t even THINK about calling me during ER”. But now, I really don’t care much about shows or movies, I mostly watch to keep up with news and sports, then catch Star Trek whenever it is on.