I own a TV. It’s a nice 32-inch LCD HD screen, in fact. I just don’t use it.
Yes, you read that right: I don’t watch TV. And I don’t care.
“How is that possible?” people ask me when I say this. “Don’t you at least have an antenna?” My answer is, of course, “No. Why should I?” No one has yet given me a good answer.
Now, I should be fair: my TV does get used. I use it for playing video games and for watching movies. It’s very good for both of those, and has a great picture. But I don’t use it for watching broadcast television. I don’t have cable, I don’t have satellite, and I don’t even have an antenna for watching local channels. I just don’t see the point.
See, with there being a strike going on at the moment over television show writers, the topic of television shows has been the talk of the water cooler—not that it ever isn’t. But at least this time, it’s about the shows themselves, rather than the content. That makes things easier on me, someone who doesn’t watch TV, to at least understand what’s being talked about. Mind, my opinion of the strike is that the whole thing is kind of silly, but I can see where the authors are coming from: after all, the network television station is dying a long, slow death already with the advent of the Internet. There are a lot of legal grey areas when it comes to licensing and revenue-sharing, and I can appreciate wanting a part of that pie. It’s still kind of silly, because this is exactly the sort of thing copyright law should be dealing with, as opposed to hunting down college students who build network-share-spidering programs.
Either way, it’s interesting to hear people complain about reality shows, and about how almost all television shows are stupid, and how they’re going to get even worse now that everything’s going to turn to reality television again, and et cetera. I don’t know how many times I hear people complain about how television is a vast wasteland, or how stupid a certain show is. Parents whine about how bad it is for their children. Adults say there’s nothing good on—an interesting tangent to this is that if you pay enough attention, most conversations about TV these days are about the commercials, as opposed to the shows. Even as Newton Minow said:
You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you’ll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it.
Now here’s the kicker: this was in 1961. Things haven’t changed, aside from the pull from westerns to other genres. I believe “true crime” is the big fad at the moment. But still: television hasn’t changed in forty-six years, and it’s unlikely to change anytime soon. Not after the strike, not after the next strike…not even after it all becomes part of the Internet anyways.
The thing that bothers me the most is that these same people complain about how everything on television is so bad—then they go home and turn it on and watch it. Parents will say how the shows for children are horrible, then they will sit down and watch the same idiocy, but among adults instead of kids. It would seem that the quality of television doesn’t matter—only its existence. So of course, people will find things to complain about. And some people will waste their whole lives doing nothing but sitting on the couch watching television.
When I mention that I don’t watch TV, there are some people who ask me “Then how do you check the weather? How do you check local news?” These are both reasonable things to watch television for, I will admit. After all, that would be information gained from local channels, which can be picked up by an antenna, or carried over cable/satellite. However, I get that information from the Internet. Why sit on a channel at a particular point in time and have to sit through minutes of commercials, when I can use the magic of the Internet to quickly determine what the weather is like in Seattle? If you know your zip code, you can do that, too. Suddenly, what takes minutes of wasting away while watching television—not to mention only getting it at predetermined times—now becomes a thirty-second affair. That’s time saved for doing more important things, such as reading to a child. Local news, too, is available on the Internet—and again, not limited to what they talk about when or how long it takes them to say something. A quick check on the Internet over the things that matter to you, and you’re done.
Live events are also troublesome. As I do not watch sports, that means little to me, but I can understand where sports fans would want to be able to watch games live. That’s fair. After all, I wouldn’t mind seeing the State of the Union speech live. On the other hand, I tend to prefer reading that anyways, and the full text is always available shortly. It’s also faster, because there’s less applause.
Still, I don’t miss television. I have so many other things to do with my time: writing, reading, playing video games, spending time with friends, and so on. It’s not worth it to me to pay money each month in order to get a service I would very rarely use.
However, there is a point I have missed here, and that is the point of culture. To a certain extent, when you watch a television show, you are participating in culture. If, say, your coworkers watch that show, it provides a communal experience. And really, it doesn’t matter how good the show is—what matters is that you all watch it, so you have a conversation topic. The same goes with video games: those that play certain games have become part of a culture that can discuss them. It’s a choice, and I make my personal one obvious. However, I can appreciate wanting to be able to talk about the latest episode of the newest sitcom with your coworkers around the water cooler. It builds community. It does make me sad that such idiocy is the common culture, but I suppose that hasn’t really changed since the days of theatre. After all, everyone went to the theatre then for entertainment, and thus, everyone had something to talk about. A shared culture.
And it is a culture I choose not to participate in. Because I don’t want to spend the time or the money—I would rather spend them on video games, and become part of that culture, instead.
That is not to say that all television shows are bad. I have encountered quite a few that are entertaining or enlightening. I own the DVD releases to some of them. However, I prefer watching them on my own time, without the constant interruptions of commercials. Still, I am also not much of a movie-goer—there is a culture there much the same as that of television, whereby the reason people go to see movies is to participate in the culture that talks about the movies, regardless of how good they really are—nor one to watch movies much in my own apartment, so I don’t watch television shows much, either. Video just doesn’t have the draw for me it has for other people.
Still, it bothers me that people consider it so normal and so regular to have and constantly watch TV that it in effect ostracizes me because I choose to spend my time in other ways. I write. I read. Yes, I play video games, the eternal waste of time, but I try to keep my game-playing limited in my life. There is nothing wrong with some entertainment—so long as it is in moderation.
I suppose in the end that such is my plea. I am not opposed to television. I am not opposed to people who watch television. There’s some good stuff out there, even stuff being broadcast these days. What I am opposed to is the idea of sitting around and accomplishing nothing in my personal life because I must participate in a culture that is obsessed with television. I opt out of that.
Maybe I am weird for not being a video person. Just my request would be to not make such an assumption about what people need to do in order to feel complete. I am not crazy just because I refuse to pay for television; that money is better spent on good wine to have with a meal with a loved one. I am not crazy just because I don’t have a show that I always watch or obsess over. I can be a reasonably-adjusted person who simply makes a choice on how to spend money. True, I might be missing out of some culture. But based on what I’ve seen that culture be, I’m not convinced I’m actually missing out on anything at all.