TS: Having vs. Not Having a Television

For my part, though I know that the folks on the respective threads are bemused, I hang around on the Amazing Race and Lost threads because a lot of good folks are there posting things that are entertaining and/or thoughtful to read. Unsurprisingly they are the only two newish series that as a result I think might be worth catching up on at some point.

DVDs are the way to go. Your reason #4 was my primary reason for giving up tv a while back - i would only watch HBO (which we don't have anymore) and DVDs. Those "Complete Seasons" of TV shows on DVD are the best thing to happen to my life since soulseek. Total godsend.

But there are just as many time-wasting books, records, and internet sites, really. I hate tv - HATE it - but surely it isn't the only thing that keeps people from thinking critically.

The odd film gets seen; the last time I was suckered into a whole series was series 1 of "24". The odd Seinfeld or Malcolm in the Middle gets watched...but reallt I'm much better off tuning into discourse and entertainment on Radio 4 and catching news-lite on Radio 5.

Radio 4 comedy quizes are fantastic.

Not Having/Watching TV wins.

Maybe it's because I don't smoke pot.

Have you ever gone to a friend's house, and then been expected to just sit down and watch whatever show he or she is in the middle of, already in progress? I have friends whose whole definition of hanging out is watching tv together. I immediatley feel trapped.

dud: people who go too far when they tell you how out of it they are when it comes to pop culture. they make my teeth hurt.

I think I know what you mean, but I've also experienced the opposite. After two years without a TV in the house, I was always struck by how weird and surreal the advertising was whenever I watched it elsewhere -- stuff I'd once known to tune out.

Also, Remy OTM upthread about growing out of the habit. We now have some kind of high-end cable package, as my roommate wanted his HBO, and I was excited about the prospect of catching up on stuff in theory, but at this point I keep forgetting that watching TV is even an option. (I'm far too busy wasting time online.)

Nik is OTM about Radio 4, of course - it's everything I love about the BBC only more so.

In my case, I COMPLETELY was a TV addict when I was younger...in ways the more time went on the more I found myself letting it go, unlike music or reading or the like. But for a while there TV Guide was an extremely important magazine for me. ;-)

I don't have a TV- although as I've posted before, I own a Replay TV (hooked up to my former roommate/best friend's TV in his condo 3 blocks away). I used to watch it when we were sharing an apartment, and I was quite happy to pay $20/month for my part of our digital cable. But I'm not going to spend $200 to buy a TV and $40/month to watch it- it's not worth that much to me. Besides, I'm always at his house after work, so I see a few episodes every week of The Daily Show and Pardon the Interruption, and there are TVs at my gym in front of the treadmills, so I'm not entirely out of the loop.

I don't usually get out of work until late, so then by the time I've gone to gym or grocery store or over a friend's house for dinner, gotten home, read email/web surfed, walked my dog, it's pretty much time to go to sleep. I don't really feel like I'm missing out, except when the ALCS was on... but with the way it went, I guess I was better off with just radio.

Still, I didn't mean growing out of it as an age thing, but something that happens if you take a break for a while...

(xpost): TiVo is nice, though on demand is a close second.

TV at home, well, I think it serves as something to do instead of talk to your family or read books. This is mostly bad but if it gets a few people in one room that's the one good thing.

I don't care if someone watches television. I certainly don't feel any higher or mightier than they are. The one thing that does drive me bonkers is when there's a television on and no one's actually watching it. My dad used to do this thing where I'd be reading a book in the living room, and he'd come in, turn on the TV, and leave the room. He couldn't understand why I'd be sitting there with access to MTV and NOT WATCH IT!

He still calls me up sometimes to see if I'm watching the John Lennon special on VH-1 (I was really into the Beatles in eighth grade.) And I just tell him again and again, I DON'T HAVE CABLE. Then he calls me Unabomer.

(That said, I'm pretty sure I never pulled the sanctimonious "Sorry, I don't poison my mind" routine. It's not my style, and besides, I'm confident I can always find other sources of mindless fun when there's no tv around.)

Worst thing about TV is when you're watching a lame show and actually sitting through the ads to get back to the crap show. That's some sad shit right there.

Last time I watched TV the best movie on was Jaws: The Revenge. On AMC. WTF.

What bothers me, and I don't want to seem like an anti-TV snob (which would be really hypocritical in some way, considering my profession!), but most people I know spend much of their time watching TV when they get home at night from work. I can't even get some people to meet up for drinks during the week to have a conversation because they've gotta get their nightly fix. I get too stir-crazy for all that. Even when I had cable at my last residence, I would use it only to watch sports on the weekends and the two aforementioned shows during the week. I've watched other shows too, but that's what DVDs are for. I figure I'll catch up with "Lost" and some others when they arrive in stores. I don't need/care to see them now.

But mostly it's the commercials that drive me nuts. The silver lining on the cloud of having commercials before films is that you're forced to actually watch these things and see just how stupid they are. It's no longer background noise while you get up to grab another drink. And I think, maybe, it's made me more impatient when it comes to watching TV on a whole. That and watching banal fucking crap like The West Wing and thinking "this is the best you got? See you in hell, tv."

totally. It's been long enough since I've had TV on as background that I'm completely re-sensitized to it. If I'm forced to endure it I'll start ranting like Steve Buscemi in Ghost World if I don't watch myself.

I watch more TV than I should, but I think if I didn't I wouldn't be doing anything uplifting, but maybe just cruising the internet more. TV has the potential to be the greatest mass media ever invented, and sometimes even meets that potential. I think the best TV series are much greater accomplishments than the best movies, etc.

TCM has their own guy to intro the movies and he's actually pretty good, but I wonder what happened to the AMC guy too.

I myself can't live without a TV. You might think it's because I'm some idiot who sits there on the couch or the recliner passively staring at nonsense, but it's really because TV is my main form of entertainment. It will also serve, sometimes, as a sort of radio station (with the audio and music video channels) and the only way I can possibly catch non-commercial films these days.

I hate most reality TV and sitcoms, don't watch half the channels out there, and can't keep up with too much serial TV. However, I'm still left with a great chunk of great programming out there, much of which has also, along with ILX, served as a vital connection to that great outside world out there, taught me a lot of things, and given me hours upon hours of entertainment. Plus, with the great majority of the commercials, I get to exercise my eye-rolling and groaning muscles!

I guess the bottom line is that I have nothing against the television if it can be used in an extremely moderate, controlled way, but I have no faith in my ability to use it that way. Perhaps I just have too much of an addictive or escapist tendency.

Two years ago I would have gone off on an angry rant about people who think television is so "essential," but I've mellowed about it. My girlfriend did get snobbed out at work by a couple of people when she said she didn't have a TV:

Girl 1: "You don't have a TV? You're so wholesome"
Girl 2: "More like out of it

Yuk.

I don't have any real moral or intellectual objection to TV (except for young kids for whom I think it's poison), I just physically CANNOT STAND to watch adverts. Since I would inevitably see some if I had a television, I choose not to have one. (I hate most of the other stuff that's on too, come to think of it.) Also I hated the way it would eat up my evenings and time would be measured in artificial half-hour chunks.

I watch DVDs on my computer though.

documentary on the Forth bridge

spotlight on one of this years Turner Prize nominees

documentary on the aerial footage of Auschwitz that was taken during the war and why nothing was done about it

'Bomber Crew' - training up grandchildren of ww2 pilots to fly Lancasters (the Spitfire Ace thing earlier in the year was fascinating)

documentary on Two Tone records

and, er, Spooks...

say wha?

my girlfriend made a dig this weekend about how terrible it is to have a TV in yr room - i kind of see the point, but i grew up with a TV in *my* room and turned out okay-ish. i don't watch too much, spend much more time reading, writing and listening to music, but its good to tune out and switch off. agreed that DVDs of tv shows are a GRATE thing (esp the shows that *never* make/made it to the UK, ie Mr Show, Chappelle, SNL, Sanford and Son), and that great TV shows are easily the equal of great movies. it has unlimited potential as a medium, that's rarely fulfilled, but sometimes.

from radiotimes.com:

Two Tone Britain
11:00pm - 12:00am
Channel 4

The great thing about being of a certain age is that music you adored as a teenager is re-evaluated when you're grown up, and is made the subject of documentaries. Such as this one, about the 2 Tone record label's stable of bands. It's a real feast of nostalgia for anyone who has ever leapt around to the glorious Specials, the Selecter, the Beat and Madness, the label's big hitters and the cornerstones of a musical movement that captured the mood of disaffected youth in the late 70s/early 80s.

Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister and Britain's inner cities were ablaze from rioters when the Specials presciently released the classic Ghost Town, one of the finest pop records ever. (Don't let anyone tell you different.) In fact, the Specials were the prime movers behind 2 Tone records, a label set up by their driving force, Jerry Dammers. It was a remarkable type of music, a mixture of reggae and punk with an astonishingly diverse audience. A valuable look at a terrifically vibrant period in British pop music history. And you'll be humming to yourself for hours afterwards.

(at least two of those bands weren't particularly TT bands but hey...)(follows two other programs in the same strand - one on asian marriage and that one about the shoe company sponsoring some musical tour. neither of which i saw)

There are lots of things on TV I think are great. I didn't have a TV for quite a while, and I don't think I did anything more productive. I was just more conscious of being bored.

I lived a very long portion of my life without a television. If you have the internet, you don't really need a television. But now I'm going through a stage where I don't have the internet in my house, but there's a television in my room. Just basic 5-channels, nothing fancy. I believe there's cable in the living room, but I can't be bothered to watch television if it requires going to a separate room. It's just something I like being able to do when I'm lying in bed doing something else.

I mean, what's astonishing about not having a telly is how much time it frees up. I wrote several novels and a couple of albums in the time when I didn't have a television, while now it amazes me how much time having a television can eat up. Several hours can go by and you've done sod all.

I don't think television is inherently bad. It saves me from a lot of loneliness right now. (I think that even when I was in a relationship, television saved us from actually having to talk to each other, thus saving us from loneliness as well.) You can avoid the trash and find something headucational or at least stimulating.

It's strange the way it's a "lifestyle choice" not to have a television. Because it was never really that way to me, it was just a question of not bothering to buy one. If it's there, I'll watch it. If it's not, I'm not that bothered. I used to like when I didn't have a television, the way it became a social activity to go to someone's house to watch programmes that I followed with them.

That TV switch has a favorite direction, like entropy- once it's on, it doesn't want to go off.

In other words, I recommend not owning a TV wholeheartedly. At least it works for me.

I guess when I consider how much I enjoyed all the other things I did, say, this past Sunday, I'm glad I don't have one -- cooking great meals, spending time with gf, playing music, reading, walking around town, etc.