Kill your TV.

What struck me was the way people not only made explicit references to television and movies, but how they would slip into character with no warning and no context. Imagine not knowing what "Beavis and Butthead" are, then someone starts doing a Beavis and Butthead bit in the middle of an otherwise sane conversation. Or you're at work talking to a normal person, then a female coworker walks by and your colleague goes "Schwing!" People were doing Southpark bits, muttering "Mkay?" or exclaiming "Timmy!" for years before I ever saw the show and finally figured out what the hell was going on.

It really is insane, and the only way to live in America and be part of it is to get cable and watch tons of TV, which I have surrendered to.

The TV is the most selfish medium. The radio still allows you to do other things while listening. The computer still allows you to multi-task (ex: typing your email/document while listening to some audio files). The newspaper is tangible so it gives you the freedom to choose whatever you want to read at anytime you want. The TV doesn't rewind for you, so you have to be glued on your couch. Otherwise, you might miss important bits of information on the program.

Bottomline: TV producers should come up with better programs. lol

Cheers Jim!

I've been there, back in grad school when I moved in with my girlfriend we couldn't afford cable and local network TV reception was really crap so we only used our TV to watch movies in the VCR and DVD players. News--got if from the Internet every day at work at the library in between patrons. I don't even watch much TV news even now, except for Weather Channel. Listen to a lot of radio, and increasingly, Podcasts, especially stuff from overseas I can't get any other way (except sometimes on shortwave radio, which is hit-or-miss and only available at certain hours, under the best weather conditions).

Back when I was a poor grad student living with an upperclassman undergrad girlfriend, we really didn't miss TV all that much. When we broke up and I went to live with my parents again, it felt good to connect a little with pop culture again. I did feel like I could relate to people better if I knew at least some of the cool/popular shows on TV. I certainly would've felt deprived if I didn't get to watch the new Battlestar Galactica when everyone else did.

It amuses me that some people can now quote The Simpsons with the accuracy and depth that people a few generations ago used to be able to do with biblical quotes. It is almost like a competing secular "gospel" of the American way of life.

I'm very selective about what I will watch on TV; I have my certain favorite shows and that's all. Otherwise my TV gets used to watch DVDs. I'm holding off on Netflix for now and relying on my local Hastings Books & Records, but I realize I'll have to join Netflix eventually to get all the episodes of some of the increasingly obscure Japanese anime I've been exposed to at Hastings...plus the artsy/foreign flicks that I used to be able to watch regularly when I lived in Houston versus living in Denton, Tx, where that kind of stuff is never available.

I never just sit and idly watch whatever is on, like I used to do in Middle and High school in the 1980s; and even back then if I was unsuccessful in my first sweep through the cable channels in finding something interesting, I would give up and go play a computer game (or Atari 2600 in the early 80s) or read a book or look up something in my World Book Encyclopedia (now I use/read Wikipedia for much the same purpose--for entertainment/diversion as much as to learn more about something).

Even when I like to think I'm "net savvy" some trends just completely pass me by; I only recently discovered the "Red vs. Blue" animated shorts using the Halo game, and found them to be at times hysterically funny...but it's all so...2003, y'know, and I'm only discovering it at the tail end of 2008...

But then again, I watch some of these retro "Best of the 80s" and "Best of the 70s" shows on VH1 and I swear I see stuff there for the first time, even during time periods where I spent WAY too much time in front of the TV and still missed some of the cultural ephemera on display decades later in retrospective. You just can't stay on top of EVERYTHING, nor would you want to.

I never watched Seinfeld, never watched Friends, or Lost, and I don't feel like I really missed much. I had given up on the show ENTERPRISE way too early so that now watching the re-runs on SciFi, it's like having a brand new show to watch, and I actually like it now. My parents know way more about American Idol than I ever will. I joke with friends that the A&E documentary series THE FIRST 48 is basically like COPS for thinking people (following a real major metropolitan area homicide unit through the first crucial 48 hours of an actual case), and is one of my favorite shows. I seldom tire of the History Channel, or Discovery Channel (Mythbusters!).

I had a girlfriend recently who only has network TV and got to watch a lot of new sitcoms with her I'd scarcely heard of before. They were ok, they did make me laugh, but it wasn't the kind of thing I'd watch regularly if I had other choices.

I also couldn't kill my TV right now because it's also how I get my Internet because DSL isn't available as an alternative for me yet in my area. I do consider getting a DVR thing so my social schedule isn't dictated by TV at all, but it's not much of an imposition right now, and many new shows are rebroadcast later on the same night a couple of hours later, lessening the pressure to get a DVR.

It may not be necessary to kill the TVs in the world, just provide the owners with other things to do. Last week TV watching was way down, possibly due to holiday activities that didn't involve television. (And maybe a few lengthy power outages in some areas.) Give people a distraction, and they don't need television. I wonder if there will be an uptick this week with all the bowl games?

I don't watch pop shows. A couple I have tried, and given up in confusion. I'm more likely to use my TV to watch movies, select reality shows (Iron Chef and the like), and if I'm without television, I hardly miss it.

The radio, however - don't go touchin' my radio!!!

Agreed. But I think we've also crossed the rubicon when it comes to the computer/internet such that "Kill your Computer/Xbox/Wii/PS2" will be the rallying cry for a budding generation looking for the next cultural norm against which to rebel.

I'm close the ten-year mark for choosing to not partake in TV (broadcast or cable).

NEWS: I've got the internet for that. I get more in-depth information without having to endure cleavage droning on about the weather or CNN spending hours creatively regurgitating the same two minutes of information about a breaking story.

CULTURE: While I'm not on top of the latest cultural trends all it takes is a few minutes on YouTube to understand what's up with American Idol, Survivor, or whatever else is the current rage.

GOOD STUFF: With Netflix I've got access to an amazing array of excellent films and documentaries. Sure I might have missed that great documentary that I may have come across while channel surfing but did I really need to know all that about a particular battle in WWII?

SPORTS: I could care less but sometimes my wife misses watching sports on TV. It does give us motivation for going out or getting together with friends when there's some notable game going on. We've got a tradition of watching the second half of the superbowl at a local mexican restaurant. They're happy for the business and we get to see the game.

MONEY: There are better things to spend $600+/year on than cable TV.

I remember being out of the country for several years back in the late 80's/early 90's and was not able to watch mainstream American television during this period. Even after I returned it took me a while to catch up on all the cultural references people were making. What struck me was the way people not only made explicit references to television and movies, but how they would slip into character with no warning and no context. Imagine not knowing what "Beavis and Butthead" are, then someone starts doing a Beavis and Butthead bit in the middle of an otherwise sane conversation. Or you're at work talking to a normal person, then a female coworker walks by and your colleague goes "Schwing!" People were doing Southpark bits, muttering "Mkay?" or exclaiming "Timmy!" for years before I ever saw the show and finally figured out what the hell was going on.

It really is insane, and the only way to live in America and be part of it is to get cable and watch tons of TV, which I have surrendered to.

I tried this for awhile too, however, my experience was much less positive. I found that I was left out of so many conversations because I had no idea what people were talking about. Even now when I have a TV and rarely use it for anything besides news, sports, and movies, I'm so clueless during many conversation at work. My co-workers, nearly all of whom have Ph.D.s, are so surprised that I've never seen Desperate Housewives, House, and most of the other garbage on these days.

Funny, we watch a fair amount of television in our household, and yet our ability to think seems to be holding up just fine. If anything, I think it's the internet that poses the larger threat to our cognitive abilities, as it seems to have a corrosive effect on attention span.

I have satellite TV; my husband has a converter box that lets him watch it on his computer, and most nights his auxiliary monitor has some show from one of the stable of the Discovery channels running, or something on SciFi. I record poker tournaments and sometimes even watch a few minutes of them. Occasionally (like tonight) I flip through the channels and find something worthwhile to watch; tonight it was a PBS episode of Sherlock Holmes. These nights are few and far between, though, and mostly the Boob Tube in the living room gathers dust.

When I first went off to college, there was little time for TV, nor did I have one. And I didn't really miss it. But when I came home for Christmas, I was confronted with TV again, and I noticed something that I hadn't before: My god, it was horrible!

After college, though, I fell back into it, and haven't really gotten off since. But nowadays, I spend a lot of what might once have been TV time on the Internet instead. I think that's a good thing.

For those (like me) who still use rabbit ears, now is the perfect time to ditch it.

I just got a digital converter box, and so far I freakin' *hate* it. It has a remote designed by a moron. Signals either come in perfectly, or are completely unwatchable, unlike analog tv. And the shows come in different formats -- widescreen, normal old-style, etc. but the box is too dumb to recognize which is which and do the right thing for it automatically. Instead it has ONE GLOBAL SETTING as to how to transform the picture, and for every show, you have to manually adjust it if it's different from what tha last thing you were watching was doing. And changing channels is infuriatingly slow. What retard designed this thing? Whoever it was HAD to know it sucked. If I meet him, it will be very hard for me not to punch him in the nose so hard that he winds up dead for foisting this piece of crap.

As it is, I watch very little TV (with rabbit ears, there's very little tv to watch.) I probably watch 2 or 3 hours of tv per week. During the last year, I did covet cable TV so I could watch Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann. But I saw the best bits via youtube anyhow. Digital TV probably means I'll be watching even less.

As times are tight, I have been considering the financial loss I take from cable, and your post reminded me of time and thought lost as well. As a touring actor, there were very long stretches of time, a good couple of years at one point, where access to a working TV was nil-to-extremely-rare. As with you, I didn't miss it, and I began to find people who did watch TV as the default activity bizarre beyond comprehension.

Then comes election season. I become addicted to whole lineups of shows as my anxiety rises. Both 2004 and 2008 I watched WAY more TV than I usually do. But now that the dust has settled, and our budget shrinks, maybe it's time to cut the cord. I have netflix, I have the intertubes, and thanks to a generous family over Christmas, I even have a Wii!

I also have a wife, though, and she likes her 3rd Rock reruns and her John and Kate Plus 8. Might be a tougher call.

I disagree strongly. The only thing I'm tempted to purchase are some of the books featured on CSPAN's book TV. I have barebones cable, rent the TV shows like Mad Men that I don't get otherwise, and watch selectively. Some shows, such as Lost, provide bonding experiences for me and my teenage sons. We watch them, then discuss them. I love TV. The thing that sucks up my time is reading blogs, but even then I mainly restrict that to the times when I'm online working (of course, I work 7 days a week....)