My falling out with television

JD, the eater of tatsuma squash, recently asked me to write about why I don't have TV, so here you go:

I grew up in a TV family, in which we had a full range of free programming and took full advantage of it. I watched TV while eating my lunch at the coffee table after morning Kindergarten, scaring the bejesus out of myself with the Sleestaks in "Land of the Lost." While I was lucky enough to be a kid who played outside all the time after school and during the summer days, the expectation was that after my Dad arrived home from work, we would all eat dinner together and spend the rest of the evening together, watching TV. My Dad's favorite show was All In The Family. TV gave me Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley and introduced me to my lifelong love, the Chicago Cubs. The TV brought us all together at the end of a day and gave us something to laugh about together. It was a normal part of our lives and I never gave it a second thought.

Fast forward to two years ago, the year in which I turned 35. I was just beginning to consider making some sort of career change. To position myself to have the freedom to do that, I worked hard to get my finances under control by limiting spending and paying off debt. This included taking a hard look at what I considered to be "fixed costs," one of which was my monthly satellite TV bill: $80. At this same time, I happened to be dating someone who did not have a TV. Well, he had a TV, but it was on the floor of his closet and was not plugged in or used except on very limited occasions. This was a revolutionary idea to me, something I had literally never considered. We talked about his reasons for not having TV, and I realized that there were some good reasons other than the financial ones for me to minimize my TV-watching time, not the least of which was the time I could use to work on changing my life instead of watching TV.

So, I let the satellite account expire.

And I started to live life without any "live" TV, because even the free channels don't come in very well when I don't have cable. I kept the television set because I adore watching movies and cannot give up my DVDs. But I find that now I tend to play movies as, at most, background noise while I do other things.

Sometime after this, I began to notice the importance that TV has in the lives of American citizens. Talk of what happened in the latest episode of this or that popular TV show suddenly seemed to dominate conversations. Certain members of my Bunko group actually called ahead before it was my turn to host to see if I would promise to have "Lost" on the television during our monthly get-together that I thought was meant for catching up with friends. There was a near mutiny among a TV-addicted faction of the Bunko group when I explained there would be no "Lost" and extolled the virtues of talking to each other, rather than watching TV. I grew to enjoy the "you must be an alien" look that inevitably resulted when I explained my ignorance of a show by saying I don't have TV. I felt like an oddball, but in a good way.

My no-TV experiment is two years old now and I feel it has been a success. I don't feel that I am missing out on popular culture or events. If I'm dying to know what people are talking about with respect to a certain show, I look it up on the internet and find my curiosity is sated. When something really special is on TV (the Tour de France, Mavericks' championship run, etc.), my friends who invite me over to watch. I spend my time at home on other things that are more productive. My attitude toward TV has evolved to a point where I find it annoying when a TV is blaring in a setting in which people should just be talking to each other instead of tuning out of life like zombies.

I try not to be a preacher regarding the no-TV experiment because it was a very individual choice and I know it wouldn't work for everyone. I don't look down on those who choose to watch TV--that's up to them and I'm guessing that they do a better job than I of multitasking and squeezing productivity out of their free time. However, I am really happy without TV and I don't know if I'll ever go back.