Six months in my own house yesterday (I just realised). And I still don't have a television.
To be honest, I'm not very well disposed to TV in general, and you might even say I'm verging on jaundiced. That's partly the result of a brush with the BBC that left me with a very low opinion of them as a body, but also because I am in no hurry to develop the watching-TV mindset.
Television means expense, both for the equipment and, in the UK, the license. I kind of resent that, and also know that I would feel obliged to justify the expense by watching the (insert expletive here) thing. Frankly, I don't have the time. There are always DVDs and music for entertainment when I'm feeling passive, books otherwise, and a million things to achieve.
But that's not to say I won't watch TV, because I do when I'm not at home. It still leaves me thinking the whole concept is deeply weird, though, and I wonder if I'm the only person in the western world to think so.
The main thing is that this is a light form of entertainment, generally undemanding, inclined towards the lowest common denominator - and yet it requires detailed knowledge of a schedule. If you feel like watching TV, you get what's on. If there's something particular you want to watch, then you have to make the time when it's on. I know there are recording facilities and so on, these days, but it still seems strange to me. You either schedule your life around your entertainment, or become so passive that you accept other people's choice for that time slot.
But what has prompted me to write about this just now is that it suddenly occurrred to me that whenever I see some television it features the SAME FEW PEOPLE. That is really odd.
Sometimes it's one person in charge of the show, sometimes another, and there are token appearances from normal people, but the bulk appears to be a constant rotation of tellypeople. Do these people spend their lives being filmed? What are they for? So that bored and lonely people feel as if they know at least somebody, because they're always in that little box in the corner?
OK, I suspect I'm weird and out of step. After all, I've never seen why celebrities exist either, so obviously I have a piece of my brain missing. But I'm really not very interested in people I don't know unless they have something remarkable I can learn from them.
Oh, and before anyone rushes to tell me that programmes like "Life On Earth" make television totally worthwhile despite the dross, I'd like to point out that I can buy that from Amazon if I wish. The only point I'm willing to concede is sport, as that is time-sensitive. But I'm not going to spend out just for the occasional match.
5 comments:
You are not alone. I'm with you to a great extent.
I reckon, on average, I watch about 2 hours per week watching TV, (and one hour of that is Mastermind and University Challenge) plus important national games like rugby or soccer, but I haven't got the patience to watch cricket.
If we had no TV, I wouldn't miss it. I get more than adequate news items on the Radio and if something really excites me and there is insufficient background to it on-line, I go a buy a newspaper.
I haven't done that for over a year! But I do miss doing the crossword!
You must understand the need people have for a celebrity. Remember the children of Israel pining for a king? Remember the EB creating their own ghastly celebrities?
I understand your sentiments but I have to wonder if many of us have merely swapped one screen for another. Would it be fair to suggest that the telly may have been replaced by the computer for entertainment, news, knowledge and people?
I hope my comments weren't too grumpy. It just seems sometimes as though everybody thinks something is normal except me, and I can't help pointing out the weirdness.
Being by nature so laissez-faire as to be practically an anarchist, I have never understood the idea of celebrity, either among the brethren or outside. Sorry. I can see that the need appears to exist, that's all.
And I'm quite sure I, at least, use my computer screen as much as others do a TV. But I think that although the devices are physically similar, they are conceptually worlds apart. A computer requires action and interaction. As a medium, TV seems to me to be essentially infantile, quite apart from the standard of content, because it spoonfeeds entertainment decided elsewhere.
I hate to admit it, but I've become pretty much addicted to TV, especially to TV of the high definition variety. Fortunately, we have a second home and although there are televisions there, the reception is so poor that we only watch pre-recorded videos, when we watch at all. When I'm there, I seem to get a lot more done, especially on the reading front.
I almost never watch televised news or comment. My TV preferences run to the Discovery or History channels when there is no good sporting event to watch.
I've been a newspaper reader since my brethren childhood days, when I had a delivery route and always brought one home. These days I monitor several national newspapers on-line, and supplement that with a local newspaper and two national journals, one weekly, the other monthly.
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