Television, or no television ?

My TV is a massive monitor. I don't watch terrestrial TV channels at all, don't have cable and under no circumstances will I ever ever ever have SKY (Mr Murdoch has enough dosh and too many questionable principles).

I don't subscribe to a channel service like Cable, or Sky, we actually recently cancelled our TV subscription because we just never watched anything. I avoided whole corporations like the plague.
In the UK, ITV (or Channel 3 as it used to be before the boom of digital television) gradually degraded. It was the channel of game shows on a Saturday night, and soap operas and topical shows in the week. Now they have ITV 1,2,3 and 4, showing orange faced men and women getting famous because they are all sleeping with each other, repeats of shows of orange faced men and women, and shows about celebrities having marital troubles.

We only have the 'free channels' and they are rarely used. My son prefers to do other things than watch the TV, he's more into movies like The Lorax, so we too have a home cinema set up, HD projector, etc.
The only downside is having to miss awesome shows like Game of Thrones until I can view them another way...

reply to post by MrJohnSmith


I can't remember the last time I switched on the TV to actually watch TV, so no you're not alone. My main TV, like yours is reserved for games and movies. The aerial is connected, but I just don't bother. Between the internet and mobile news these days, there is really no need.

The problem I have is where I live, the TV shows are sometimes up to a full season behind the US, if they come out at all. They are always played late on work nights, and after some reality show BS that always runs about 1/2hr over. It's also full of ads. You can, by comparison, watch full length episodes only a few days after their release on either youtube or on the websites of their stations, without ads, whenever you feel like, with the option to pause or rewind.

Makes it a no-brainer really which choice is the smart one.

reply to post by 74Templar


Many thanks to all who replied... Glad to know it's not just me, thank you....

reply to post by MrJohnSmith


I personally enjoy TV. I also enjoy books and outdoor activities. Watching TV does not make one stupid, neither does enjoying fluff like reality shows. Now, if you LIVE for watching TV....that's a different story.

As for the cable company, either way, I also need a land-line phone and internet connection, and they are really the only viable choice in my area (and even that was the installer fibbing a little on the distance to the nearest pole).

reply to post by FeistyFemme


Agreed. I get several hundred stations and truly only watch a handful of stations. They really need to offer an a la carte menu on cable and dish or it will implode.

I went several year without, but others in the household wanted dish. The internet is enough entertainment for me.

reply to post by MrJohnSmith


You are definitely not alone.

I find it sad when I go places and everyone is talking about what is on tv and commercials and such, and I never have any clue what they are going on about.

Some of it sounds so stupid, that I am actually glad to be left out of the conversation.

I don't watch tv either and have always limited tv viewing as I feel like it rots the brain. I don't think that television programming necessarily has technology embedded in it that renders it a form of mind control (except for infomercials--Ronco owns patents on it even lol). However, I do think that tv has a tendency towards feeding into our collective memory and has some level of influence on our decision making. Not to mention that I still get commercial jingles stuck in my head that I heard decades ago. That kind of bothers me.

What walks downstairs, alone or in pairs and makes a slinkity sound. A spring, a spring! A marvelous thing!
Everyone know it's a Slinky!

Yeah...but at least that one is more tolerable than the Oscar Meyer bologna jingle...right?