Wednesday, May 20, 2009

can't live with it...

I recently read a short article about a group of people who pledged to not watch television for a while.
That's not necessarily that unusual, but the follow up was.
 
Nearly 100% of the people enjoyed the quality of their lives better without the TV.  That's somewhat surprising, but I've heard that sort of thing before.  What was more interesting to me was that nearly 100% of the people went back to watching TV.
 
A friend of mine just signed up for cable.  I told her she'd never go back to the rabbit ears of her childhood.  She said, "Are you saying I had big ears!?"
 
Annie and I didn't have cable in Middletown, but in State College it was the law.  You couldn't really get even one channel in the mountains without some sort of cable-like helpl.  I had one friend in the entire town that didn't have cable.  He had his in-laws record the shows he wanted to watch on their VCR.  He'd highlight the shows in a tv guide and then they'd become the world's slowest Tivo for him.
 
On a side note - it's much easier to say "I tivo'd it" than "I dvr'd it"  that's all...
 
That crazy television - You can't live without it...but it's also hard to really LIVE with it.

4 comments:

  1. It seems that most people I know that have cable end up primarily watching shows that are on the regular non-cable stations and rarely watch programs from the cable channels. Cable gets them out of messing with bunny ears and digital converters. I've never had cable in my life, however, I do get tempted to convert when my bunny ears and converter is not working.

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  2. I'll admit that I cheat by using Hulu (gotta keep up with House) but our TV is disconnected and sitting in the basement.

    Life is definitely better. I'm not going back.

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  3. TV is God giving all of us a back massage. No way I am giving up the magic box

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  4. We haven't had anything other than plain tv. As Lori always says "There's enough garbage on regular tv-why do we need cable?"

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