Can you live without television? It may seem strange, but there are Ameircans who abstain from watching TV by choice.
A new research by Marina Krcmar, professor of communications at North Carolina's Wake Forest University revealed that the majority of them are either very liberal or very conservative:
The motivations for most people who abandon TV fall into three categories, Krcmar found.
Some give it up to avoid exposing their families to the excessive sex, violence, and consumerism they feel are promoted onscreen. Others object to the medium itself, claiming television intrudes too much into their lives, interferes with conversation and takes time away from the family. Finally, some people have a beef with the power and values of the television industry and don't want its influence in their homes.
In contrast to the average American adult, who watches three hours of television a day, non-watchers fill their time with a plethora of activities.
"Non-viewers had a greater variety of things that they did with their free time than viewers did," Krcmar said. "It's not just that they were reading instead of watching TV. They were hiking and biking, and going to community meetings and visiting with friends. Overall, they tend to do more of everything."
I stopped watching 99.9999% broadcast television about 7 years ago, and I primarily use the TV for watching movies from Netflix. The other 0.0001% of the time the TV is not on a DVD is because there is a hurricane or tropical storm nearby me (Miami) and having the TV on to see possible evacuation orders is easier than listening to someone describe it on the radio.
I'll even up the snobbery a little bit in that the ONLY terrestrial radio I have listened to in the past two years is NPR ;-P However I do listen to streaming internet music, but I only loosely call that as *radio*.
Oh, and why did I stop? I'd say a mix of #1 and #2.
I just gave it up, although I do miss COPS reruns.
You work on shows for theater yet you say, "Even good TV is pretty insubstancial compared to art." Says who? What is classified as art?
You read, meditate and play with the cats and describe that as "being engaged in real life". Well, if you say so I guess.
When watchin TV "you're always thinking of something else you should be doing" but listening to NPR and watching YouTube videos doesn't cause the same reaction?
You have got to be on that high horse you claim you're not on, otherwise you couldn't look that far down your nose at us peons watching television.