The average American watches 4.2 hours of TV per day. The average woman over the age of 55 apparently watches as much as 4.5 hours of TV per day.
During this last tour I realized that I don’t watch enough TV to justify the $70 monthly cost of the service – I use Dish Network… today I called Dish. At first I wanted to suspend the accound for a few months, but since they charge $5/month to suspend an accound, I decided to get rid of the account altogether, but then the woman on the phone talked me into keeping just the local channels for $5.95… – a saving of $64/month or $768/year – or one meal with friends at Tetsuya’s in Sydney. You know one meal prepared by Tetsuya sounds a lot more thrilling than 12 months of TV!!
Last night I sat down to watch a little TV, just to see whether I should really get rid of it… and I was quickly bored. So many channels, but nothing I could watch for more than a few minutes. Netflix costs less than a third of Dish Network TV and I would rather watch a movie of my choice when I feel like it. Yes, the Dish DVR can record a TV show for me, but have you tried searching for a particular movie by entering a letter at a time via the remote control?
Yeah, I’m not a TV person myself, I think it’s horrible.
TV also reflects the interests and perceptions of society, so when the “reality” TV shows started booming, I was like “This is how America thinks?”
It cracks me up because people will say “I just watch it because it’s bad and I laugh at it.” Well, the networks have hit their target audience. I reply “But you watched it, didn’t you?”. haha, and despite how bad a TV show is, they still watched it, and they still were hit with commercials (TV was invented for commerce).
But not to knock TV too much — when I recently moved into a house with cable, I now find myself in front of Food Network, the History Channel, ESPN, the Outdoor Channel (mtn biking), and the Indie Movie channel often. Yep, I’m a hypocrite. hahaha
But I have gone years and years without TV or cable, so either is totally okay with me.
But I’m really in internet person, being able to watch stuff I could never find on TV, watch stations from different countries, and get news from different countries, too, aside from endless amounts of information. This was especially nice post 9-11, and not being surrounded by the propaganda broadcasted on US TV and news.
OK, done babbling. lol
-D
In the UK, you have to buy a yearly TV license before you can watch TV because half of the channels are government owned so there are no commercials, kinda like PBS here. However, half of the channels aren’t government owned, so people in the UK must spend money for a TV license or risk the consequences of getting caught, plus they are bombarded with commericals, which really blows.
I have to have TV just for MONK. I love that show. Only regular one I don’t want to miss.