Oh I know. I’ve been TV free (and loving it) all semester. I’m utterly dreading going home for winter break, because the tv’s always on. Rarely is it showing anything anybody actually wants to watch, it’s just blaring in the background 8 hours a day. I didn’t notice it so much until I didn’t have a tv myself, but jebus, how many times can you watch that same Law and Order rerun? Or another baby story. Or more real life ER shows. Or a crapy Dateline telling you about stuff you have no earthly reason to care about! I can’t take it anymore!
Forbin, me too. Have not turned on the TV for about a year. Feel like a ‘born again Christian’.
Except that now I spend too much time on the computer though.
What’s your solution on that?
Alas, I’m lost.
Comfortable chair pehaps?
You know what would be totally crazy? If television actually allowed you to watch only what you wanted to watch when you wanted to watch it, instead of binding you into a chair and forcing your eyeballs open with some sort of mechanical torture device. Yeah, that would be real insane. But I don’t know how it would sell…
You people obviously don’t deserve a television. Get over yourselves.
A valiant knight rushes in to defend his lady’s honor!
Very gallant grim spectre dude. :rolleyes:
How is this discussion hurting you?
As I stated in my first response, I used to be rather vocal in my opposition to television but not anymore. I only posted to “join in the conversation” as it were. I’ve lived happily without television for quite a long time, and really don’t care about it much more myself. I think you’re the one who needs to “get over yourself”.
I’ve got a 27" TV. Tell me when you’ll be under my apartment window, and I’ll drop it down to you. 
Most of everything is crap. That includes television shows, books, poems, paintings, movies, video games, and all the other media. I don’t understand why television always gets singled out. I don’t watch bad TV shows, but I also don’t read bad books, or play awful video games. You always have to sort through the shit.
I see a flaw in your plan.
That’s what I thought at first, too, GuanoLad, but then I looked over at my computer and saw the DVD-ROM drive.
Thanks, **neutron[b/]. I only watch DVDs on my computer. It’s the only DVD player I have. But nice try, wise guy. 
Grr! I botched the tags. Should have previewed. Oh well.
TV doesn’t suck. Specific TV shows suck. The trick is to never ever be exposed to those sucky TV shows.
I love my Tivo!!
Our cable was cut off back in May and we haven’t bothered to get it turned back on. The kids get to watch some PBS in the morning; for the rest of the time, it’s not on.
We bought rabbit ears, but they won’t tune in our local UPN affiliate, so we download "Enterprise."Other than that…haven’t missed it a whit. I was never a “Buffy” fan, I hate the CONCEPT of reality shows, let alone the shows themselves. There are no sit-coms I’m burning to see. I get the news online and through my local NPR affiliate.
My kids aren’t bombarded by loud, colorful, catchy 30-second music videos telling them what to buy, who to listen to, what to covet, and what kind of food to eat. That is one of the best gifts I can give them…and myself.
Christmas this year - as far as shopping goes - has been more relaxed than I can ever remember it having been in the past.
I don’t begrudge anyone else their television time…I just wish it wasn’t so REMARKABLE when I tell them I don’t watch it.
I had the cable shut off a little over a year ago, after realizing I hadn’t watched anything on it (except for turning on CNN at a rather momentous day in September due to the news sites on the web being overloaded) for nearly a year before that. (So I’m not the swiftest on the uptake sometimes.) As I recall, it took a couple minutes to get it through to the cable company cs drone that I wasn’t trying to get a better package, I wanted no package at all. (And then it took three more calls to get them to stop trying to bill me.)
I don’t miss it all that much. I hesitate on telling most people that I don’t really watch television–partly because it does have a tendency to attract strange looks. But also partly because there’s a tendency among some more vocal tv-free people to routinely dislocate their shoulders and get cricks in their necks by the enthusiasm with which they pat themselves on the back while lifting their noses into the air to sneer downwards over at the hoi polloi.
For the most part, shows that I may have some interest in seeing are making it out to DVD anyway, whereupon I can usually rent them (God bless you, Netflix). And if they don’t, well, the world keeps on spinning.
I also wish that it wasn’t such a remarkable thing, though.
I have a TV to watch my DVDs and tapes, and to occasionally watch PBS or the History Channel. (AKA the Hitler Channel)
nuetron star… all the shows you mentioned are one’s I never watch.
The sport I watch to the exclusion of almost everything else is hockey. Having a few more channels showing more games is a good thing and the Hockey Channel would be the perfect addition to our selection.
If you stay up late enough Discovery has great educational pornography too… 
Did someone say porn? Hmm, maybe I’ll have to keep my TV after all.
You know when I first got out of college and got married I had a TV but no cable and no antenna so all I watched was movies. I didn’t miss it. Then I ended up getting cable and for years watched too much crap. Now, divorced I have an antenna so I can get the news and the Simpsons. Hell I should turn it off even more and go back to reading, I read an entire book last night. The only thing I miss about cable is the weather channel. It’s too bad we can pick and choose what we want.
Do the people who do not watch any TV have any interest in sports?
I could go without watching anything on TV for the rest of my life, except for sports. I am not a junkie, but I enjoy watching football on Sunday’s for a couple of hours, and watching my favorite basketball and baseball teams play.
Even now, I watch very few shows. On Monday’s I’ll watch Raymond, and Thursday’s is Survivor for an hour, but that is about it, unless I am bored, then I’ll flick it on every once in a great while. Of course, all that time I save, I waste doing other things like sitting at the computer, or reading a book…nothing more productive than TV.
It is the sports though man, I need my sports!