Over 2 months ago, I removed the sole TV from my house permanently. I haven’t had cable or any other means of adding channels since 1997 and I was watching an average of only 45 minutes a day so the transition to no TV wasn’t that hard for me.
The one strong connection I did notice was when I sat down to eat. I wasn’t sure what to do with myself since I was eating almost all meals in front of the TV.
I substituted a nice view of my back yard through a window that gets a lot of sun and have eaten all my meals there since. I no longer think of the TV when I eat and enjoy watching the birds out the back window.
I have been surprised by how I still reference things I saw on TV in conversations. I thought that TV would quickly fall from my mind and me speech but It hasn’t. I still reference TV in my conversations and believe that this may continue for some time.
Which brings me to my shocking experience with TV at a friends house yesterday.
I arrived at his house to pick him up. I was buying him lunch for his birthday. I enter his house and gazed upon his giant flat panel TV only to be taken aback as I see graphic scenes of a large scale shooting spree at a college in Virginia. It was quite unnerving to see but even worse to here.
I noticed two things right away. The first was how the news reporters were hyping up what was already a very shocking incident that needed absolutely no hype whatsoever. The second what the continuous loop effect created by the reporters repeating the same statements and observations. It seemed like I was watching a loop. When there was a tiny bit of new information, it was injected into the loop and the loop was restarted.
I was honestly shocked by the whole thing. The event itself struck me as very unfortunate but the news reporting was what turned my off the most.
Think about that for a moment. There was an event in which a large number of youth were killed. I was saddened by that event. I thought what a shame and utter waste it was. Then… I moved on. However, I was shocked by the actions of the news reporters. I wondered why they wanted to make me relive this event over and over and over. That sickened me more than the event itself.
My total time of watching that TV was less than 5 minutes and look at the effect it had on me.
What is your 1, 2, 4, or 8 hours of daily TV watching having on you?
Richard Lee
April 22, 2007 at 1:55 pm
I was about the last person in my part of the world to hear about the shootings – because like you I’m also on the ‘No TV diet’. Someone told me – and couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it on TV before they mentioned it to me (some time after the event.)
It’s probably not a surprise to you (or anyone else who also refuses TV) that many of the people close to me actually (and quite strongly) disagree with my decision to not allow media negativity to wash over me on a daily basis.
Many understand the media hype it up, as you mention above. But they argue it’s better to watch and suffer the hype and actually ‘know what’s going on in the World’ than not watch TV/the news and ‘live in ignorance’.
I find that an interesting and in my opinion totally flawed viewpoint for reasons I won’t go into and clutter up your blog about. I just find it all quite sad people are so willing to allow negativity into their lives so much more easily than positivity.
May 3, 2007 at 12:13 pm
you need to get an rss feed, if possible, on this blog so we can subscribe…
June 19, 2008 at 5:08 am
Somehow i missed the point. Probably lost in translation
Anyway … nice blog to visit.
cheers, Uncooked