Celebrating a TV-free year

I gave up TV just a smidge over a year ago. It’s been an interesting journey, and one that I get asked about a lot. Lemme see if I can explain.

I was a big Dish and TiVo junkie. In fact, I’m still a big fan of TiVo. If you’re going to watch television, by all means, get one; they rock.

But, the more I used TiVo, an interesting shift began to occur. It used to be that television was part of my routine. I’d have some favorite show, and parts of my week got scheduled around that show. “Thursdays at 8:00, gotta be home for Seinfeld”, that sort of thing. And then I got a Dish-TiVo combo unit. Mmm, tons of channels, and this handy box that is skimming the cream and storing it for whenever I wanted. What lovely excess! Now I didn’t have to wait until Thursday at 8:00, I could get my fix whenever I wanted. Schweet!

Except… now, there was no routine, no habit to watch television at a specific time. I could watch or not, and then shows would still be there on the TiVo’s hard drive. Oh, so I don’t _have_ to watch TV right now, I could put it off and watch it later. As the regularly scheduled habit began to fade, I increasingly chose to do other things, like read a book, or geek on the computer. In fact, I almost began to look at the TiVo as a To Do list. “Aww, jeez, I’ve got thirty episodes of Larry Sanders queued up. Someday I gotta sit down and watch those.”

And then, the Dish-TiVo combo box broke. I had to send the unit off to Sony to be repaired, which took an unreasonable six weeks. Six weeks during which I had no television feed at all. I was shocked to find I didn’t miss it that much. I read more, I went out more, and I began to find I enjoyed all the extra free time I had as a result.

Once the Dish-TiVo box was returned, I decided to leave it in the closet for a while and continue the TV-free experiment for a bit longer. And longer. And longer.

And so it’s been over a year. It’s getting to be a little odd and awkward at times. A friend mentions some hot new actor and I haven’t seen the series she’s starring in. People laugh about some commercial that’s making the rounds and I have no idea what they’re talking about. Wow, the lack of commercials is huge. As time passes, I’m increasingly divorced from the cultural mainstream, which is an odd experience. But some people might say I’ve only ever had a passing acquaintance with it anyway.

For what it’s worth, I’m not a zealous evangelist about giving up TV. I still have a DVD player, and I maintain a very active account with Netflix. The only challenge now is figuring out which movies I might want to watch, when I’m not being bombarded with ads for them.