I have decided to give up watching television

I know I'm addicted to the television and I've decided I don't really care. I like the warm, blueish glow of it in my room. I have a mentally strenuous job, so I don't expect myself to come home after 12 hours of data analysis and compose a symphony. Or sometimes even read a book. (And is comfort literature really any worse for me than watching, say, Horizon?) Sometimes it's nice to veg, so long as it doesn't happen every night.

But yeah. I've lived for long periods of my life without a television and shortly shall again, since I won't have the money to buy one when I move.

I find it strange that people still consider the television to be something *evil*.

What should you do? Read. I love reading. :-)

I feel a generally more together person when I avoid The News.

now i am in a place with a tv in it again, but i kind of forget its there. it never occurs to me to put it on. there are things i would like to see, now and then, documentaries, films, football, but i dont really know when things are on, because i dont look at the listings

if it was up to me i would probably get rid of it, but i am not the only person in the house, and i dont mind it being there

I don't miss it.

I still watch a lot of films and have a handful of TV series on DVD (24, Carnivale, South Park etcetera), and will sit down with my dad to watch football every so often (rarely a full match). I have too much on with writing, seeing Emma, playing football, going to gigs etcetera to "waste" time watching TV. I have no desire whatsoever to go back to watching lots of TV, although I never watched all that much even as a teenager - I was always out playing football or reading.

Sorry, Madchen, we are really ruining your thread, aren't we?

I have gone for long periods without watching telly. It ain't no thang.

Things I do instead: read/write/run/*hem hem*/prepare elaborate meals

I think this is the thing. I didn't have a TV in my first and third years at university and when I came home for the summer I'd lost the habit of picking up the flicker just to see what was on. I've gone back to my old ways now - I sometimes watch four or five hours in an evening - and I think the only thing to do is go cold turkey now, which will give me a month to kick the habit before the good things start coming on around Christmas.

Ruin away, Kate :)

I tend only to watch t.v when Mr R comes in, I don't like watching it by myself.

Yesterday though I was feeling rather down, so I slumped on the couch with a tin of Celebrations and stared at QVC for four hours. I found that QVC is good company. Two ladies in the corner of my living room preaching the benefits of feather boa christmas lights and twee glitzy costume jewellery. I sat slack jawed and lethargic. I look forward to seeing them again today.

But my complaint is, after 10 to 12 hour days, I'm really not mentally aware to be doing much except fairly passive entertainment. My eyes are too strained to even read a book. So I don't feel guilty about doing something I get enjoyment out of.

I am, however, trying to cut down at the weekends, when I really should be doing something constructive. I've stopped watching television on Sunday morning/afternoons and forced myself to work on NaSoALMo - which is actually remarkably good for me. I don't miss Hollyoaks. (Though I do kind of miss Countryfile and the Antiques Roadshow.)

::starts salivating::

Madchen, tell me more, please?

I'm partial to Saturday Kitchen also.

I have various creative activities lined up for me to start with, each one an example of the ways in which I am currently slipping into middle age. I haven't started any of them yet.

I am much better at backgammon than my mobile telephone is.

I am also trying to fit half an hour of house work a day into my schedule, thus freeing my weekend time to spend with Bloke.

I gave up watching television in 2001, and haven't returned to the habit. I gave my TV set to a friend that year, and though I now live in a shared flat which has a telly, I never watch it. Sometimes I watch television or movies with friends at their homes, but I never watch it by myself.

2) What advice do you give me to lose the addiction? What should I do with my time instead?

I don't think my experience is comparable to yours, since I didn't watch much TV even before I gave up doing it altogether. That was one of the reasons I gave it up in the first place: most of the time my TV set was just gathering dust on the corner, and I had this friend with a very small telly, so I thought, why don't give my big TV set to her, she has more use for it. I'm a fairly outgoing and social person, so, as well as on weekends, on the weekdays also I'm often out with friends: in a pub, at the movies, at a friend's flat, at a gig, or in some student party. I wouldn't have too much time to watch the telly anyway. Sometimes I do go to a friends place just to watch some TV show, but it's always a social thing too, it's not just about one particular show or telly in general. The times when I feel like just spending the evening at home, I read and listen to music. I do recognize the need to sort of zero out your brains once in a while, which is why I pick all sorts of light reading from the library: comics, books about movies and music and other art, artist biographies, light social history, sociology, cultural studies and other such books, etc. They're my equivalent to staring at the television, but I do feel I've learned more reading books about gay history, music production, the different analysis of Hitchcock, or Batman as an icon, than I would have done if I'd spent the same amount of time watching TV.

It ate my time. But more than that, the adverts made me angry and depressed, and I'm a calmer, nicer person without them. There are still a lot of television programmes that I like, it was just the mode of delivery that became hateful to me.

Lethargy is still possible, especially in the winter. But after ten minutes I find I have to do *something*, whereas telly kept boredom at bay JUST enough so I'd never be spurred into action. It's not like I go out and change the world or anything (that's what I mean about it not being some moral decision) - mostly I just watch DVDs on my laptop. But ah! the lack of adverts.

Tim, I've taken to playing Tetris while watching telly and I have a very sore thumb.

It isn't so much about the quality of her life, it's about the ability to connect with life outside. She seems utterly clueless about what is happening. Television broadens your horizons. I realize television can be a negative factor in your life - if not used properly - but you have to have some media in your life so you can keep up with the world. She doesn't realize there's a war in Iraq, she's most probably utterly clueless about other things,...

Nothing is bad in itself, it's how you use it.

When I didn't have a TV, I wasted my braindead time playing solitaire on the computer. I do think that I actually learn stuff, occasionally, even from the most brainjunk of programmes. I learn stuff about science from CSI. I learn stuff about deduction from murder mysteries. I certainly learn things from programmes like Countryfile and Antiques Roadshow and Horizon. I think it's certainly less wasted than the time I spent playing solitaire.

Unluckily Bloke hates police procedurals, so we don't watch them. Luckily, however, he loves Hugh Laurie, so we do get to watch House MD, which is the essentially the same, but with spinal taps and white coats.

Foyle's War, however, is the greatest TV programme in history.

Sorry I'm rambling. I'd suggest gradual withdrawl rather than abrupt cold turkey. And prepare yourself for accusations of snobbery.

I mute adverts, and it makes tv viewing much easier. Although I also watch a lot less anyway, since I started bittorrenting.

Which of course means I end up leaving the house and spending six hours goggle-eyed at Madchen's set. Ahem

TV's too good, as an art form, for me to turn it off - that would be no different than eliminating films or novels from my life.

Here's a funny one. Today the BBC (and they should know) ran an article entitled 'Path to true happiness revealed'. "In an unusual three-month experiment, six specialists from a variety of disciplines worked to improve the happiness levels of a typical UK town." These experts drew up a 10 Point plan of measures people should take to boost their happiness levels. Point 9 was "cut your TV viewing by half". When you got to the end of the article, you discovered that it was an ad for a new TV series. The last line was "Making Slough Happy begins on Tuesday 15th November at 9pm on BBC Two." I won't half be watching it!

Wasn't that the working title for Why Don't You?

I haven't lived with a television in nearly fifteen years. The internet supplies me with all my vacuous staring in front of a screen needs.

I recommend getting rid of your TV, nevertheless. In today's DVD oriented world you will still be able to watch all the good stuff on your computer screen.

I'm having no trouble avoiding the telly tonight because I've spent almost two hours in the gym and a wistful glance at the TV guide unwisted me quite quickly when I realised nothing I wanted to watch is on. I'm going to be tremendously tempted by the Take That programme tomorrow, but I'll resist!

1) Do you watch much telly? Have you ever given it up? Do you think you could?

not much. a couple of hours a week? i used to watch shitloads until i was 16 but that, i think now, was because i lived in the arse-end of nowhere and there was fuck all going on. i did tend to be reading/writing/studying/playing music at the same time unless it was something i REALLY liked though. when i moved to hk i pretty much cold-turkeyed it, we had a tv in the common room and people used to get together to watch (mostly) the simpsons, friends and the x-files and i joined in with the x-files and simpsons people if i wasn't doing something else. (friends is made by and for scum, obv, and if you're watching it and you're not scum then you need to watch less tv.) now i live in a house with no tv addicts - we have a tv in the living room and we've got hundreds of channels and if someone wants to watch something they go ahead, but its default setting is off. i'll make an effort to be in to see sth like six feet under or dr who or queer as folk or buffy or this life - hello, this is what tv was INVENTED FOR omg it's so great etc etc - or films/docu/investigative/sociology stuff that sounds good or anything with footage of the awesome weird shit that lives at the bottom of the sea, and i have a terrible weakness for wife swap but i wouldn't tape it or rush home to catch it. i could live without it, sure. if it broke tonight and never worked again i wouldn't be sad. (because i have another one in my room har har! but actually i have used that one exactly twice in the year and a bit i've lived here, once to watch a dr who ep someone had taped for me and once to watch sth that was on terrestrial when someone else wanted to watch sth that was on cable.)

2) What advice do you give me to lose the addiction? What should I do with my time instead?

part 1 - i like the idea someone had upthread of sticking it in a cupboard or making it a hassle to switch it on in other ways - just cos you know you're putting it on because there's sth you reamlly want to watch, as opposed to your default setting being tv-on. part 2 - you won't even need to think of an answer, seriously. you'll be wondering how and why the hell you ever fitted so much tv in your life.

I could but I don't want to.

Non-glib answer: 7 hours per week (for my 7 shows). I could give it up if there weren't any good shows on it, but there will always be good shows on it.

Like milo said, damning tv as a medium is akin to damning film/books. People would be complaining about the wasting effects of cinema if we could access it at home the same way we access the TV. (And cinema can be pointed at for being an even more alienating experience -- you're in a darkened room and you are ostracized if you speak during a film.) In the end, it's the way you use TV, though TV tries to control/influence the way you use it; whether such methods are effective is another matter.

I did give it up my first year in college, when I was going through my obligatory leftist "DOWN WITH MASS CULTURE" phase. As a result, I nearly missed out on Sports Night, and I did miss out on Bonds' 70-73 HRs and Homicide.

2) What advice do you give me to lose the addiction? What should I do with my time instead?

Replace it with some other vice.

TV's Dr Aric Sigman - who has "written and presented scientific documentaries for BBC1... and for Dispatches on Channel 4" and who regularly appears on This Morning and who even has an imdb profile which features an admittedly rather short list of "notable TV guest appearances" has just published a book about the dangers of television. He was on Richard & Judy a few weeks ago promoting it.

Not fucking me. I tried watching Kill Bill on my new DVD computer but it lasted about 10 minutes before fidgetting set in.

Surely if you want to reach television viewers a good way to do it is via television.

Our DVD-empowered laptop doesn't work as well as the "normal" DVD player. Is this normal?

Maybe the answer is one of those little things.

There is a guy who gets on the train at Slough who watches DVDs on his laptop, so everyone else watches them as well.

what *isn't* sustained by Big Business and Capitalism?

damning tv as a medium is akin to damning film/books

Of course it doesn't necessarily make sense to banish all television PROGRAMMES, but it makes perfect sense to ditch the MEDIUM. I wouldn't buy an edition of a book that had an ugly picture on the cover, and I wouldn't watch The West Wing with advert breaks.

-- Archel (slightlyfoxe...), November 16th, 2oo5

but the ads are built into the narrative structure. cliffhangers!

this is a really interesting predicament for American TV in general, as downloading increases.

Yes, I also like stories/text, but I hate those papers and covers those stories are printed on. ROFL!

but this ruins english showings because our ad breaks are mandated to be fewer and further apart.

as for the whole 'too much tv' thing, i watch a lot but it is all things i plan to watch, i won't just turn it on and slump in front of it. i did give up watching CSI repeats recently though.

I always think how nice it would be to listen to the radio instead, but ti seems somehow more anti-social.

Wick = wicked = good

i think the only way out is to not go back home at all. and go to other places like the gym or the library or evening classes or the pub where there's no access to TVs.