Turn off the box
I don’t watch Television.
“What?”
That’s often the reaction I get when I tell people that I don’t watch TV. Usually followed by “But what about the news?”1 and “Well, actually I don’t watch much TV either”2.
It started in November of 2002. I had found myself whining about the fact that I never seemed to have the time to do all the things that I wanted to do. But somehow I seemed to have the time to watch 5, 10, 15 hours of TV each week. 15 hours seems like a lot, doesn’t it? A couple of hours a night (news + current affairs program + one one-hour show) and a few more on the weekend and wham, there’s 15-16 hours a week. Easier than you thought.
Some close friends of ours had made a conscious choice not to have a TV when they first had kids. And seven or so years later, somehow they had managed to not only survive, but had remained interesting, well-informed people and wonderful parents.
I didn’t like the look on my son’s face when he was watching TV. Next time you see someone watching TV, look at their face. Have a good look. Adjectives that will come to mind may include slack, unresponsive, dull, and glazed. It’s not an attractive sight. I suspected that the same look was on my face when I was watching TV.
This thinking was happening while we were living in a small apartment while our house was being renovated. The TV reception was poor, so the kids tended to choose to watch videos rather than TV shows. So my wife and I decided that when we moved back home, it would be without TV. The kids could watch videos when they were having their afternoon rest and we would still watch films when we liked, but no broadcast television. Scary stuff. So I de-tuned all the channels from the TV and the VCR and we returned home.
The first week or two was a bit strange. But not quite the type of “strange” that I expected. For starters, the kids didn’t even ask for the TV. We hadn’t actually told them yet that we were deleting television from our lives, so we were expecting some sort of protest (Daniel was 4 and a half and Laura was almost 3 at the time). But nothing! And almost two years later, Daniel has only asked once: Dad, can I watch kids shows on TV? No Daniel, we don’t watch TV - but you can watch a video at rest time. Oh, all right Dad. Hey, do you want to play footy?
I started wondering what exactly I’d got from literally years of watching TV. Oh sure, I’ve reminisced plenty of times with friends over the TV shows we watched as kids or talked about current shows. And they are pretty good memories. But having spend thousands of hours watching TV to come up with a bunch of “X was a really good show”, “Hey, Y was a really good show”, “Yeah man, Y was really excellent” is a bit tragic, don’t you think? And the advertising! How many thousands of hours of our lives do we waste watching advertising? Which, by the way, has a crap/usefulness ratio that is orders of magnitude higher than TV, who’s C/U ratio is already pretty huge.
I’d spent a lot of time in my 20s regretting not learning how to play a musical instrument. I’d always kicked myself about not having read enough literary classics. Not having learned another language. Not spending enough time with my wife and kids. Not having seen enough classic films. But now I’ve deleted TV. I’ve learned how to play the guitar, have read more in the past two years than I did in the preceding ten, have seen most of the films on my ‘must see’ list, have started to learn modern Greek, and am more than happy with the amount of time I get to spend with my family. And I’ve started a blog 
My lesson? Delete TV, create your life.
1 TV news is the equivalent of going through a tabloid newspaper in about 10 minutes, only reading the headlines and the first paragraph of each story. Because you read a lot faster than having someone read to you, you would save 20 minutes a day by scanning a tabloid over watching the evening news. So I don’t need TV to keep up-to-date with current events. Our household has The Age delivered, and there is more news and opinion on the web than anyone could ever digest, and the vast majority has far more depth and quality than anything you’ll find on TV. And the rare quality stuff that you find on TV usually has a transcript published on the web.
2 The “I don’t watch much TV” club is a very large one, with a simple requirement for membership: knowing of someone - anyone - that watches more TV than you. The “I don’t watch TV” club appears to be much smaller (but it would be great if it were considerably larger!).
Interesting Reading
Why reading is more fun than TV.
Report slams TV ‘damage’ to young.
Flow: What’s worth living for? You won’t experience any watching TV.
April 19th, 2005 at 3:26 pm
i dont watch tv either.
same reason: no time.
plus, i’d rather watch the world go by.
April 24th, 2006 at 12:37 am
I have been @ my husband for ~ 10 yrs that TV occupies far too much of his home time. Having being brought up in an environment where the TV was never on @ dinner time, TV was banned before school and could only be watched after school homework and piano practise was complete. Sure, I could never really participate in conversations about most TV shows @ school but it was little bother to me.
To this day, TV is not a necessity in my life as it is for my husband. He switches the TV on 1st thing when he gets up in the morning & leaves it on all day (even when he goes out). The 42″ plasma was a huge mistake! Not to mention the reduction of its life span if left on when not in use.
My (almost) 4 mth old son is fed in the living area where the TV resides. The colours and moving images are a huge attraction to him. If you obstruct his view, he will move so that he can see the TV again. An addiction already brewing @ 4 mths old!! Whenever hubby is at work, the TV is off and @ feed time I make eye contact with my son who is staring back @ me wide eyed. We even manage to talk to eachother. My husband feeds him with his undivided attention on the box!
Even cartoons aren’t what I recall them to be in my day. Gone are the days of innocent cartoons with gentle, lovable characters.
TURN OFF THE BOX!!
My husband has admitted to watching too much TV and has agreed to cut the amount of TV watched after I forced him to read “Turn off the box”. Thnx Red
Perhaps I’ll post in 5 yrs time and let you know how much TV my son actually watches per week. If I have things my way, it’ll be close to none.
September 29th, 2006 at 12:04 am
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May 4th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
I’m a grad student writing a short research paper on how people who don’t watch TV are kind of weird.
In more academic terms, I’m studying the social effects of the media on society after reading Jerzy Kosinski’s novel “Being There.”
It is my belief that the media serves as a social glue for society. At the very least it creates a baseline for topical conversation as a means of exploring the issues of the society itself.
For example, OJ’s trial was a public exploration of the benefits of celebrity, of interracial relationships, and of the way in which money and celebrity equals exemption from moral norms in our society.
As non-TV-watchers, how can you expect to interact with the rest of a society, which watches TV (and films, etc)? I hosted a morning radio show for several years; keeping up on topical issues, (who did what on Survivor, etc.), was imperative–because one major way people learn about themselves and others is by watching TV.
I’ve seen the glazed look you wrote about. Usually it’s the people who say they don’t watch TV that have the biggest problem zoning out in front of it. If you can watch TV without losing track of the time and date, it’s not such a bad thing.
http://www.jacksnupple.com/blog/2007/02/28/tv-is-cool/
Chris Vadnais
http://www.jacksnupple.com/blog
May 6th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
Chris:
I certainly hope I’m weird. If I just wanted to be mediocre, I’d sit down, shut up, turn on the box and consume, consume, consume. Seems to be the thing to do for a lot of folks.
The most interesting people I know watch very little or no television. They are too busy doing things to have any time spare to watch television. Do you think people get to the end of their lives and wish they’d spent more time in front of the television?
A couple of thoughts in response to your commments:
Don’t conflate television with other media. I’m an avid consumer of media: newspapers, the internet, films, etc. Television is not the same. The control dynamic is different when reading a newspaper or findomg out about an issue on the internet or watching a film. You do it on your own terms, to your own timetable. Not when the network decides. And the information doesn’t go through arbitrary filters like: are there visuals? Is it ok with our advertisers?
It’s my belief that people can hold topical conversations without reference to television.
Your examples illustrate this perfectly. Should you want to discuss OJ’s trial, there is no need to watch television. What does television add to the conversation? Watching television is not a conversation. It’s a one-way lecture.
And Survivor? Honestly, who cares? “Reality television” is a wonderful irony. If discussing who did what on a tv show like Survivor is imperative to provide the glue in your society, then your society has serious problems. But you don’t need me to tell you that. I’d rather talk to people about who did what among them, their friends, their families, and so on. But if your society sits on its arse watching television, I guess that’s all you have to talk about.
I’ve found that people who think they learn about themselves and others by watching TV are deluding themselves. TV is manufactured make-believe. We learn about ourselves and others by interacting with others, getting out and doing. Not sitting on a couch watching pretend people live pretend lives. And that includes Survivor and all the other so-called reality TV shows.
Broadcast television is a waste of time. It’s simply a delivery vehicle for advertising.
May 29th, 2007 at 10:36 am
I strongly disagree with you.
Some people seem to feel better about themselves and separate themsleves from the rest of the society they hold comtempt for by claiming not to watch TV. Yes, I think that’s weird. Not even novel anymore–but still weird.
You write: “Do you think people get to the end of their lives and wish they’d spent more time in front of the television?”
No, and I think that’s an obviously silly and condescending question. At the end of your life, will you wish you saw more films, read more newspapers, or surfed more websites? I hope not.
“And the information doesn’t go through arbitrary filters like: are there visuals? Is it ok with our advertisers?”
What media are you consuming that you think DOESN’T go through these ‘arbitrary’ filters? Films? Please tell me you’re kidding! Who pays for films to be made? Who owns the newspapers?
“I’ve found that people who think they learn about themselves and others by watching TV are deluding themselves. TV is manufactured make-believe. We learn about ourselves and others by interacting with others, getting out and doing. Not sitting on a couch watching pretend people live pretend lives. And that includes Survivor and all the other so-called reality TV shows.”
How did you come across that finding? Is that just what you want to think? I suggest that TV makes it acceptable to talk about issues that might have been taboo before–homosexuality, spoiled kids, severe chemical addictions. TV brings issues into a comfort zone so that people can express and exchange their own feelings about them. I’m not saying sitting around watching TV does any good in and of itself–neither does going to medical school or joining new social clubs–it’s what you do with those new ideas and relationships that matters.
I submit that TV absolutely IS the same as all the other media. The only way it’s different is that some people–for whatever reason–believe it is the only one with an agenda.
May 30th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Wow, it seems like I have really struck a nerve.
You seem to have trouble believing that I actually don’t watch TV (”people who say they don’t watch tv”, “claiming not to watch TV”). Do you think I secretly watch TV when nobody is looking? Are you so entranced by television that you simply can’t believe someone would willingly ignore it?
Television has a huge opportunity cost. I read recently that the average American child watches over 4.5 hours of television per day. I would imagine that Australia would be similar. That’s an incredible waste of time, and the real cost is in the useful and productive things that *aren’t* done while that time is being wasted sitting in front of television, watching inanity interspersed with advertising for junk food, toys and so on (helping to further a culture of never-ending want).
Television is obviously very near and dear to you. The fact that I believe it is of no value or negative value* is clearly quite confronting for you. Have you had a job in television or something similar? I’m trying to work out why you appear to feel so threatened by people who say television is a waste of time.
* Recent research points to a link between rising rates of autism and increased time in front of television in the early years of childhood. Just do a search on autism and television.
May 31st, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Ha ha…I re-read my post and it is pretty assertive. I was in the middle of a bottle of ripple during a Jerry Springer marathon and I was pretty drunk (just kidding).
I apologize; I didn’t mean it to be so caustic. I tried to be careful not to make it personal, which is why I referred to â€people who say they don’t watch tv†and “claiming not to watch TV.â€
Of course I believe you don’t watch TV.
I also believe many other people who say they don’t–and maybe they really don’t–but that has nothing to do with my point. The point is that it’s an incredibly trendy “image” thing to SAY you don’t, that’s all. I hope that makes sense.
For example, browse twenty random MySpace profiles and count the times you see “I don’t watch that much TV” in the “Television Favorites” box. If you write nothing in the box, the box even doesn’t show up. I rarely see “I don’t have that many heroes” or “I don’t listen to that much music.” If that’s the case, the boxes just aren’t there.
You busted me. I do in fact have a job in television, but I’m certainly not out on the Internet trying to rally people in front of their tubes. (At least not consciously!) As I stated, I’m a student and I stumbled onto your blog while researching this topic.
I must admit I’m amused that you didn’t address any of my points, instead focusing on the obvious weakness of my overly passionate post.
In any case, I respect you and your choice not to watch TV. I just think it’s a bit overboard to eliminate the tube completely.
My two cents, (not that you asked for it).