In my house, it’s always been my husband, and this held true even when I changed husbands. (The TV remote had nothing to do with it.) It really makes no difference to me, since I don’t care much about TV, and even if I did, having someone else hold the remote all the time would train me out of it.
I just got to thinking about it the other day, and I would be a poor remote-holder. First of all, I’d be too concerned about what other people in the room would want to see. Second, I’d be embarrassed to watch excessively lame things (like Jerry Springer) if there were witnesses around. Third, I think commercials can be interesting sometimes.
(Of course, if I’m driving my car, I will change the radio station every fifteen seconds, choose excessively lame songs, and will not tolerate commercials. But that’s entirely different.)
In my house it is me (the husband) and was the same with my ex-wife. When my wife and I first moved in together (and thinking back, when we used to spend the night together), the remote always ended in my hand.
It is no big deal, really. And we never really talk about it. Actually, there have been times I have handed her the remote when I could find nothing to watch, and she would just hand it back telling me to pick something. She actually thinks I have better taste for her.
Now when it comes to my clothes to wear for the day, that is a totally different subject.
Did one hand it to the other or did you at least get to facillitate the transfer?
In our house it’s almost always me. It does crack me up though to go upstairs in the evening and she’s always holding it pointed at the TV… sound asleep.
They must have handed it off. I never touch the darn thing.
One time, I woke up in the middle of the night and the TV was still on, which usually bugs me, but in this instance, Blazing Saddles was on. I lay there listening to it for a while, but then my husband woke up, changed the channel, and fell back asleep…all in about a minute. When I complained the next morning, my husband said he had changed the channel so he wouldn’t stay up late listening!
I am a complete control freak about the remote, while my husband doesn’t care much about it. He’s pretty content to let me set the volume, do the fast-forwarding, etc. If he has the remote, it’s because I’m reading.
Neither of us surf channels much anymore. We’re mostly watching a DVD or something we have recorded on the DVR.
Usually whoever gets to it first. Its kind of a defacto rule that whoever turns on the TV gets to watch what they want, if they pick within a reasonable time. If we’re between things to watch, its whoever grabs the remote first.
We tend to watch TV by consensus but if we just can’t agree, one will normally get up and go to another TV or just do something else.
Unless football is on, my wife and I are watching something we’ve DVR’d. We mutually pick the show, but I work the remote. I know the exact moment to hit the “play” button while fast-forwarding through commercials to make viewing go smoothly.
My wife will readily admit to accidentally letting fast-forward run a minute or two into the show. Every. Damn. Time.
Lo, in the beginning was the Remote and the Remote was with DeHusband and was an integral *part * of DeHusband and darkness moved across the face of the waters.
And a shining Internet showed us the error of our ways and we said, Let there be TiVo. Suddenly, a multitude of heavenly UPS drivers brought unto us TiVo and the glory shown all about TiVo and DeHusband was sore afraid (and slow to learn). I girded up my loins (ouch) and yea verily mastered the subtle art of season-passing and commercial skipping. Therefore everafter, the power of control as been subtly wielded by me and shared only occasionally. By the power of TiVo…I have the power!
My wife does. She watches the TV, I don’t. She doesn’t surf, though, she watches one show at a time. I have to ask her to operate the DVD remote, because I can’t see the letters or icons on the buttons, no matter how close or far away I hold the damn thing - so I don’t know how it works.
I have the remote most of the time, because if Mr. brown holds it, whatever show I’m watching ends up minimized into an 8" X 11" mini-screen while he channel-surfs 1,609 other channels. And he makes the same rounds five times every half-hour, in case the programming had changed in the last five minutes.
My husband usually does.
Generally we watch the same shows during the week, so it doesn’t matter. But on nights when there’s nothing that we usually watch on, it can be bad. I am of the “look at the listings channel and see if anything interesting is on before changing channels” school. He is of the *“flip around and see if I catch a few minutes of anything that piques my interest” *school. It drives me nuts. While you’re flipping from channel to channel, and seeing what’s on, you’re wasting time that could be spent watching something that you found in the listings and flipped directly to!
Neither of us, I guess. I mean, one of us will have it in our hands while we’re actually turning the TV on or changing channels, but then it just sets there until one of us turns the channel or the volume or something. Neither of us really controls it, so to speak. We don’t watch a whole lot of TV and when we do it’s usually something we both are watching.
I do! ** Drachillix** and I seldom watched TV when we first got together and have just recently started watching things but I evolved into She Who Controls mostly because of my high-stress job.
After what we call a DeadBaby Day, I can only sit in front of the TV with my hubby if there are unicorns and rainbows and fluffy bunnies wafting dreamily across the screen, so I get to choose what I can tolerate.
The remotes are mine by rights (there are three), but I’m a wise and gracious ruler, so I let Mr. Legend or, very occasionally, one of the kids control them some of the time. I’m the only one who knows how to operate them the right way, however, and it takes all my self-control to tolerate their inept choosing of shows.
When I’m alone, I put the TV on whatever looked vaguely interesting at first and then I flip through the onscreen guide one channel at a time, so that the only thing that shows is the little bar at the bottom of the screen. This way, I can actually watch the show while still reassuring myself that I’m not missing anything good. I will sometimes flip through channels while commercials are on as well. This is behavior I’m not proud of, and I refrain from it when other people are home.
