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Living without Television

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Madman in the ruins.

12:01 / 09.04.05

Due to a set of exceptionally shitty and painfull personal circumstances. I'm shortly going to be moving out of the ancestral family pile into rented accomadation. Finaces will be tight, tight enouth that wondering if 120 pounds a year could be better spent on luxuries like food (Or a broadband connection)

So i'm hatching a plan. For the past couple of weeks i've been making a mental not of how much TV I actually watch. And how much TV I make a point of watching.

The results are a litte scary, a thumbnail poll goes something like.
Time spent watching TV:
I watch about 4 hours of TV a night, 3 of these hours are spent flicking through the Music channels on Sky (which I sometime have on as background while i'm sitting at the PC), and the other hour is a mix of sci fi shows such as Andromeda and Firefly. Which to honest I can take or leave.

Programmes I would make a point of watching:
The current run of Dr Who-cos its like a culturall event yah?

So I think I could survive without it. (Look out for me standing in the local 24 hour Supermarket in fornt of the TV display watching Dr Who on sat nights)

And what can I do to fll my new found free time?
A mental image of me sitting in my flat listening to Radio 4 while reading classic literature (Y'know someone like Gemmell) jostles with a mental image of me drunkenly surfing the internt for porn. The truth will be someting inbetween the two I suspect.

So a question to all the 'lithers out there.

Who doesn't have a TV and managed without one?

12:24 / 09.04.05

Almost anything worth watching is available on BitTorrent eventually, so I'd get y'self and ADSL connection and don't look back.

12:28 / 09.04.05

I don't have a TV in my room at home, and I stay out of the communual areas so as to avoid contact with my family. I don't have one at uni, and there isn't one at my girlfriend's house, so I tend to avoid it in general. Its true, you do get a lot more free time, but you gotta watch out, because otherwise you'll just spend it idling on the internet, like me.

About a year or so ago a load of posters went up around Brighton. They didn't have any small print, so I don't know which group did it, but they had these big bold messages like "NOT IN MY LIVING ROOM" or "STOP WATCHING TELEVISION". I think I must have taken the hint because it was around then that I did.

12:28 / 09.04.05

We don't have a television, which is a bit daft since my associate is doing teacher-training in media studies. It's not really on purpose - just that neither of us happened to possess one - but I rather like it and am opposed to the idea of getting one (a moot point, since we can't really avoid it).

Pros: absence of that slightly sick feeling you get when you realise that you've spent the entire evening surfing between programmes you never wanted to watch in the first place; swathes of time you can occupy by reading, cooking, knitting, writing, practising martial arts, studying, etc. etc.

Cons: inability to join in with 50 per cent of all pub conversations.

I don't actually miss watching TV at all because I was never a great watcher anyway, owing to low embarrassmant threshold, but YMMV on that front.

12:30 / 09.04.05

- we don't have an internet connection at home either, which precludes wasting loads of time on the net as well. I save all that for the office.

13:54 / 09.04.05

Since I got my own appartement in 1995 I am without a TV. And I don´t know, why I would need one, is there really anything worth watching? And I don´t know, when I would have the time for watching TV, there are so many more interesting ways to waste my time.

But maybe I am an exception. For years, I had to live with my father in an one-room-appartement and his TV was on from 14.00 - 24.00. So when I got out, I was not really a friend of television.

14:13 / 09.04.05

Very possible...though it's true that i sit there blankly at half the pub/work conversations.

We haven't had one for a couple of years now, and i'm sure there's stuff i've missed, but my 'things i really want to/should do' list has halved. Anything you're that interested in you can get elsewhere anyway: library; bittorrent, net.

Plus the money we saved from the tv licence has gone to a year's worth of dvd rentals. Yay and stuff.

14:29 / 09.04.05

I watch three things on television at the moment: Clone Wars on Toonami, Desperate Housewives (although one of my co-workers has started bringing in copied vcd's so even that's starting to look unnecessary) and, uh... hmm. The odd film when it's on? That's about it.

14:42 / 09.04.05

I have a TV, but I rarely watch it. Maybe an hour a week, if that. I used to make a point of watching Conan O'Brian, The Daily Show, The Office, stuff like that. But this past year or so, I don't really mind missing them. Of course, all of the time I spend not watching TV is now replaced with time on the computer, and if I didn't have broadband, I'd probably go right back to the boob tube.

17:04 / 09.04.05

I have no TV, and while there may be a few programmes that I'd enjoy seeing, I really don't miss it.

But losing my internet connection would hurt.

18:22 / 09.04.05

I've got a t.v. in my room, but it's pretty much just for dvds and playstation these days. I haven't watched much t.v. at all since I got to college. Except of course for the occasional standup comedy night (my girlfriend has a bit of an addiction, so I have no choice).

If it comes down to having to pick, get broadband instead of t.v. To illustrate a point, every show mentioned in this thread can be obtained through bittorrent. Which reminds me, clone wars is ready...

To sum up, a good PC an do everything a t.v. does and more. And somehow, wasting hours on drunken internet porn will leave you less dirty than wasting hours on semi-drunken television.

Madman in the ruins.

19:04 / 09.04.05

Yeah i've got a ASDL router

so anything that I could make a point of watching I could probably find on t'internet.

I spent this afternoon converting a old chest of drawers into a storage cabinet for my CD's and Vynil in prepaertion for the split.

Its kinda weird cos at age 33 i've been exposed to TV all my life, I remember events like the advent of Video recorders (My Dad brough Beta cos it was better picture quiality than VHS), I remember early remote control TV's and the lauch of Channel 4. So for me TV has been around all of my life. And it has sort of shaped a ot of my memories - Programmes such as The Tube, Totp, Cracker I remember watching Live Aid on TV IT was a hot and sunny day even in Cheshire, I remember the drunken period of my early 20's and watching The Freddie Mercuty tribute concert in a freinds house.

Its gona be like loosing a family freind.

20:37 / 09.04.05

I've been living without network tv or cable for 15 years or so when my family decided it was time to throw ours off the balcony. We've never looked back. I've got a PS2 for games and DVDs, and more computers than a sane person should have. I can take or leave TV, but you'll have to pry my cable modem from my cold, dead hands.

21:11 / 09.04.05

I haven't owned a television for four years now, after realising I had spent three hours idly zapping through the five terrestial channels. Haven't looked back since. DVD's are played on the computer, which is also the primary news source, after Radio 4. Yes, the inability to join pub conversations about the latest programme was annoying at first, but I seem to have become quite skilled at steering these round to topics that are tangentially related to the show and yet capable of including everyone, regardless of media access. Living without television is easier than you think, and you gain hours per day in which to do...anything really. I cook more elaborate meals now, and find I actually have time to sit down and appreciate a good book or Radio 4.

21:51 / 09.04.05

My TV gets crappy reception without cable, so I don't watch anything on it except DVDs. When my ex still lived here we had cable, but there was never anything worth watching other than Adult Swim.

06:58 / 10.04.05

No TV here, either. Rather, no CABLE, so only local stations on the antenna (4 in total). Where I live (down the street from the CBC building, which comes in weakest on the antenna) this is considered no television. I didn't really watch TV when I had a cable package - in fact, I'm watching more now, it seems. When it came down to paying for either TV or Internet, well, I can get TV from the net, so there wasn't really much of a choice. I do miss channel-surfing for synchronicity, though, and the pervasive jagged presence of background visuals. I miss it about 5 times a year (3 this year - no NHL).

07:53 / 10.04.05

I watch TV all the damn time. It's on even if I'm doing something else, muted and in the background. I'm one of those people who can't take silence, which is probably indicative of some larger character flaw.

14:24 / 10.04.05

I stopped watching tv in the late '80s. It's amazing how aware you are of television programming even you don't watch tv, read magazines, listen to the radio, or read newspapers. In recent years I've relented and have rented DVDs of television programs, and enjoyed them immensely. The only thing I watch on a weekly basis is the L Word, and that's on a laptop. Got to keep the beast caged, don't you know.

Can't honestly say I ever miss it. One of the nice things about being a tv-vegan is that after a while, people stop trying to talk to you about the lives of tv characters as though they were friends you knew in common. It always made my flesh creep when people did that.

15:41 / 10.04.05

I haven't watched TV since about 1992. We do posess a television, but it is solely for watching DVDs, and even that we only find the time to do once or twice a month.

The thing that always astounds me when I do end up seeing a television program in a bar or somesuch is how utterly banal everything seems. The TV news is the worst, with all of their artificial drama and ridiculous spin. It's enough to make me ill.

I wonder about people who actually make an effort to have TV be a part of their lives. I can't imagine spending so much time in so unproductive and passive a fashion.

22:10 / 10.04.05

I cook more elaborate meals now

This is just so true. Nothing to do with being more Enlightened!!1! and SUPERIOR without a TV, just that, like so many people are saying, you're getting back all the time you otherwise might have spent waiting for things to start/come back on/the next thing to start. Between DVD and downloads you’re still going to be watching as many moving pictures as you want, but without ever having to hover for when the right ones come along. Living without a TV these days is about as ‘difficult’ as saying you’re not going to go fishing any more, but that you’ll still be visiting the fishmongers, ie it’s got nothing to do with not liking fish. In most cases.

Ummm... Ditching the crap fish metaphor, it’s a big problem for tv, isn’t it? It’s the big problem. If more and more people are watching what they want without also subscribing/paying the licence fee/sitting through the adverts. It’s not even as if downloading has evolved as a deliberate means of *avoiding* any of these things, it’s just a better way of watching. Which just happens to cut out the three main ways tv is funded.

Oh, and

I'm one of those people who can't take silence

dude, that’s me, too. Only now I have the radio on all the damn time. It’s much easier to ignore than background-noise tv ever was, I never catch myself lingering in the doorway waiting for someone to finish their sentence. It’s all the talking, without any of the eye contact.

23:02 / 10.04.05

I never catch myself lingering in the doorway waiting for someone to finish their sentence.

I am all amazement.*

I cannot leave my car/the room on regular occasions when we listen to Radio 4, specifically because I am not only waiting for someone to finish their sentence, but to finish their programme. Sometimes my son and I sit in the car, wait for a pause in the words, run to the house (proper bundling with my son shrieking 'quick Mummy, get the key") fling the door open and press the on button on the radio before we take our coats off.

Commonly this happens if it's 'I'm sorry, I haven't a Clue' or 'Claire in the Community' and in fact scarily, we have been known to leave the radio on all day just to avoid the Mummy-button-fumble scenario.

*Sorry, that was far too Jane Austen. And, can I just say, 'My, what a lovely turn of ankle you have.'

Tryphena Absent

23:08 / 10.04.05

I find myself doing extra washing up, drying up, putting dishes away and cleaning the kitchen surfaces just so that I can listen to the ends of radio programmes. Tomorrow I'm not working, which is great because it means I can get up for Women's Hour.

23:10 / 10.04.05

I love woman's hour.

I am looking forward to not working because I can engineer my day to do crap jobs to good programmes. Ironing and Radio 4 go exceptionally well together.

23:49 / 10.04.05

I haven't had a TV for about a decade now, and can honestly say that I feel much better for it. Certainly, I'm far more productive than I probably would be with one, and, film aside (I have a fairly nifty home cinema system setup on my PC for running DVDs), in the rare case that there's something I actually consider worth watching on TV, I have P2P software and a broadband connection.

23:50 / 10.04.05

I love TV and watch a great deal of it. I reckon there's lots of good TV in the schedules, think TV news is pretty good and believe £10 a month to be pretty good value (particularly when you factor in BBC radio and bbc.co.uk), but other people's mileage clarly varies. If you really can't afford that then I've no doubt you could survive without it. And, as others have said, you can download most of the best stuff for the price of your ADSL. Although that does make me wonder, have you tried evading paying the licence fee, John Odin?

I wonder about people who actually make an effort to have TV be a part of their lives. I can't imagine spending so much time in so unproductive and passive a fashion.

Maybe I can help, then. What is it you wonder about me, M(e)rror?

23:53 / 10.04.05

Oh, surely everything goes well with Radio4. I want Radio4 played at my funeral. Not any specific programme, but for them just to flick the radio on and turn it up so everyone can hear.

Okay. If there’s a particular programme that I want to listen to (usually 6-30 comedy, and thank heavens someone other than me is enjoying Claire In The Community. Sally Phillips = this year's comedy God), I set several radios going in the flat, just so I can wander from one room to another without worrying about it. But, if it’s just background noise, then my ears tune in and tune back out again, all through any given programme anyway. I like Woman’s Hour too, but I never listen to all of it. And radio is easier to ignore than telly, is all I’m saying, because there isn’t a fixed point to look at, it’s not central to whatever else you’re doing.

Either that, or I’m just a callous brute who really enjoys the feeling of walking out on people when they’re speaking. Hm. Grrr.

00:33 / 11.04.05

I think there's a difference between watching a show on TV and watching TV as a general activity. I watch a bunch of shows, The Daily Show, Lost, The OC, 24, but I just put it on when the show is starting and turn it off when it ends. No pointless flicking through channels.

That said, I watch a ton of stuff on DVD, both movies and TV shows, and I don't think of that as a bad thing.

14:34 / 11.04.05

I very vey seldom watch TV. Dr Who being the only show I've made a point of watching recently. I tend to use the radio for news or sport. If I lived alone I almost certainly wouldn't have a TV.

14:51 / 11.04.05

I think I might actually watch more tv if I had a projector. I have proven that I can hear a tv in the back of the house with the volume set to zero while I'm standing on the sidewalk in front of the house. It's that little whine or buzz -- I can hear it perfectly and it sets my teeth on edge. The tv itself is almost more of a problem than the programming.

15:00 / 11.04.05

The tv broke about 2-3 years ago, an I never got around to buying a new one. I watched on my computer for a while, but then I made a habit out of checking the programme before turning on, to avoid channel surfing.
Then I suddenly realized that I had gone a month without watching any tv and I felt fine. Now I just torrent anything that's important and waste my spare time surfing the net. Often for porn, but not always.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

15:25 / 11.04.05

Since I got satellite telly I've got in the habit of having the TV on with News24 muted (which is depressing) or, slightly better, one of the music video channels or XFM, I'm quite a fan of using my satellite telly to pick up digital radio.

I mostly watch history/current affairs stuff, so record stuff on my boxes memory to watch at more convenient times, such as the mornings when I don't have to get up early. I think getting a Sky + box has helped because I just have to remember to tell it to record stuff, rather than organise myself around when certain shows are on.

15:26 / 11.04.05

Cor blimey - there's seems to be a lot of 'lithers without TVs. I thought it was just Stoatie who didn't.

I watch far too much TV and have one in my room too which has stopped me reading at night time to a degree, but I do love Saturday Kitchen nursing my hangover in the morning.

Like Smoothly says though, what about just not paying? I pay now, as my housemate and I can afford it, but we haven't always been able to, and just didn't. Got a few letters through but nothing more.

The adverts they have saying we can find out where you live, and we know blah blha. I think they just work out who hasn't paid by looking at their records of who has - so that they know number 14 in a particular street hasn't paid, and send them a nasty letter (with or without them having a TV).

15:38 / 11.04.05

I have a TV, but no cable or antenna. We watch DVDs, mostly, although there's one or two stations that come in kind of fuzzily if you really try.

We're very happy, and most of the decent shows not only wind up as torrents, but also wind up on netflix, so we get 'em that way.

Although having watched the first disc of Babylon 5, I'm really wondering what the hell all my friends were on about with that show. I'm presuming it gets better.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

16:38 / 11.04.05

Before I even get with the TV-hating, can I just say I'm with olulabelle on the R4 thing. It does my fucking head in if I'm without it for too long. Same goes for the internet- I guess I'm replacing one addiction with two others. (They're all better with beer, obviously).

Ah, I used to watch TV constantly. Or if I wasn't watching it, I'd have it on constantly. Terrified I'd miss something fantastic, I'd leave the bugger going 24/7.

THEN I lived with someone for six years who was REALLY REALLY REALLY addicted to TV. We went on holiday ot Cornwall once, and while I'd be out with Biscuits checking out the countryside (and, yes, meeting the local pub mad- who was quite a nice guy, as it goes- kind of how I'd always imagined Jeffrey Bernard to be as a drinking partner) she'd be staying in the cottage WATCHING TV. With REALLY bad reception. Fuck, I even went without my radio for those few days...

Point being, it really put me off TV. In the same way that living with a Trek obsessive put me off Star Trek for life.

BUT... I bought one a couple of months back, when I bought an XBox. Didn't buy an aerial, mind...
...then Dr Who started. So I bought an aerial. And having made the mistake of lazily watching random telly for a couple of hours, have decided that it's 45 minutes a week of telly for me, and no more.
Reading the TV lisitings at work (we have to) and finding stuff like "Top 10 Celebrity Mingers" hasn't really altered my opinion- namely, I'm not missing much.
As has been said before, anything worth watching is downloadable or will be on DVD sooner or later.

Which brings me to another point- commitment.
I don't have the commitment to watch programmes on telly. Staying in/waking up AT THE SAME TIME EVERY WEEK? or maybe even a SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT TIME? I really can't do that. It's working with Dr Who so far, and the effort is paying off, but it really does go against my better nature. I was always crap at following programmes anyway- I'm a completist obsessive twat, so to miss one episode would ruin the next for me, and I was never good at catching all the episodes anyway.

I think I'll get rid of the aerial when Who finishes. It was only a tenner. I can always get another one when the next season starts.

rising and revolving

13:24 / 12.04.05

I own a television, but no aerial and no cable - so there's no actual television on my television. It does have a PS2 hooked up to it, and I use that to watch DVDs. I like watching serials on DVD with my fiancee, but that's pretty much it for the tube. Sometimes we'll bittorrent things and watch them on the laptop, but that's generally too much hassle.

I think the lack of anyone here saying "I don't have TV, and it sucks" should be pretty indicative. I've lost more of my life to the tube than I have to the mindless haze of pot, and that's saying something. Although pot and TV do go together rather well, as it happens.

I'm also seeing more films and live entertainment out and about with actual people these days, which is glorious.

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