WRITER'S BLOCK
by Tim Wood 

TV No More 

            We did it. We took one of the most radical actions possible in contemporary society.

            We not only turned off our TV, we cancelled our cable television account.  It took one phone call. Gone, discontinued, severed, no longer in service. The ComCast customer service rep didn’t even try to talk us out of it.

            What’s so radical about cutting off cable?  First off all, without cable, there’s no TV on Cape Cod. Over-air signals are difficult to intercept here on the elbow, especially, so unless we decide to put up an extremely tall pole with an antenna on top that will probably violate zoning regulations, we’re not going to get any commercial TV at all.

            So we join the approximately 13 percent of U.S. households that do not have either cable or satellite TV.  Of those approximately 11 million households without pay television, exactly how many, like us, only use their TVs to watch videos and DVDs, I haven’t been able to determine. Many are probably in rural areas, while others still get TV the old fashion way.  Admittedly, we’re not being as radical as some. We’re still among the 99 percent of households with at least one television (50 percent have at least two, including us, although TV #2 hasn’t emerged from its closet in at least two years).

            This decision wasn’t made capriciously, and I am by no means anti-television. There was a time when I watched a lot of TV, especially when I was a kid.  But over the years, as other interests began to compete for my time, TV became less and less important.  It didn’t help that the quality of programming has been on a steady downward march for years.  By the time the ridiculous reality TV trend began to usurp the airwaves, I was hardly watching any TV at all.  The final two were “West Wing” and “The Simpsons.” Then “West Wing” ended its run.  I still love “The Simpsons,” but can’t remember the last time I watched a new episode.  I’ll just wait until for the season-by-season DVDs. I long ago stopped watching local and network news, preferring to get my news through the Internet and newspapers.

            The only other programming I watched was the town and school cable channels, which I’d usually tape if I couldn’t make a meeting. With Channel 18 now streamed live on the Internet, and most programs archived for viewing anytime, one of the final reasons to keep cable was gone.  A VCR at the office will capture stray school committee meetings that need covering.

            We’d long ago cut cable back to the most basic level offered, so the $13.50 per month savings isn’t going to make a significant difference in our bank account, though we can certainly use an extra $183 a year.  More importantly, my wife and I decided to take the step because we don’t watch television anymore, and don’t want our kids watching it, either.        

            We all know Americans watch too much television.  According to A.C. Neilsen, television is on in the average home six hours and 47 minutes per day.  The average American watches four hours and 35 minutes of TV per day.  Kids spend more than three and a half hours a day in front of the tube, and spend more time per year watching TV than they do in school.  Or reading. Or running around outside.  By age 18, a child will have seen 200,000 acts of violence on television; by the age of 65, the average person will have sat through two million television commercials.

            Maybe its hypocritical, but I’d rather not have my kids watching as much TV as I did.  TV today is different. It isn’t a half dozen channels and three networks.  It’s thousands of program choices, hardly any of them appropriate for children or, in fact, of much redeeming value at all.  Advertising today is more insidiously intertwined with entertainment programs targeted at kids.  Sure, there’s PBS, but “Clifford,” “Arthur” and “Curious George” all have huge product lines, and sales of merchandise, much of it rubbish, fuels that most sacred of kids’ television programs, “Sesame Street.”

            Our TV won’t lay fallow, however. I love movies, and I’d rather watch a DVD than commercial television anytime.  We allow our son one half hour video per day, although we’re trying to peel that back to less than seven days per week.  That allows us to control both the amount and content of what he’s watching.

            Many of today’s “best” TV shows are now regularly released on DVD, so should something come along that interests me, I can watch at my leisure, and won’t have to be tied to a network-mandated schedule. The Internet also provides an opportunity, since many shows can be downloaded either for free or a small fee.  Of course, that presupposes that there’s something worth watching.

1/25/07