Why I Don’t Watch Much Broadcast TV

I can spend weeks elaborating, but Andrea Harris did a better job of explaining:

Since I have no cable this week, I hooked up the rabbit ear thing I bought a few years ago at Radio Shack and watched the five or so snow-and-static-blurred channels that service those poor saps who canâ€™t fork out half their earnings to Brighthouse. Now I have not watched network tv in some years, except for a glimpse or two. Is it me, or is broadcast tv now geared to the Spongebob Squarepants set exclusively? Simple concepts (“war bad! world bad! stay inside! strangers bad!”), as many words of one syllable as possible, short sentences, lots of colorful pictures tarting everything up, sloooow-paced speech. Correction: broadcast tv is aimed at the â€œspecial educationâ€� wing of the nursery.

And they are insulting. Presuming viewers to have the attention span of ants, news shows play clips of the same headlining stories over again every fifteen minutes. This is on the hour-long evening news. The morning shows are even dumber. Nothing irritates me more than condescension in the morning, so of course the morning â€œnewsâ€� shows on ABCCBSNBC lather it on. If I saw that clip of John-effing-Kerry hugging Michael J. Fox (Kerryâ€™s going to give Fox new stem cells from his own brain! â€˜cos Bush is too mean and is keeping all the Einstein-genius-level stem cells in a safe in Karl Roveâ€™s office, right next to the hearts of little orphan babies stored up for the next Methodist church meeting-â€™n’-sacrifice) one more time this morning I was going to throw something (the handy ladder the painters left) through the tv. However, in good news, Mount St. Helens is going to blow up any minute, possibly taking out some of the envirohuggies who infest Oregon. Silver liningâ€¦

Most of my TV viewing comes from cable nowadays, with FX’s “Rescue Me” and first-run programming from BBC America taking up residence on my DVR.

6 thoughts on “Why I Don’t Watch Much Broadcast TV”

An antenna is a good way to watch tv–if you are willing to get an outdoor model. It can’t improve the content of the programing, but the picture is crystal clear, even more so with an HDTV tuner. It’s also a good way to save money if don’t watch much television or find that you mostly use cable to get a better picture for the networks. The $40-$100+ a month you pay could instead buy the dvd sets of your favorite cable shows with money to spare. For me it’s a no brainer to spend the money on HDTV tuner ($100 on ebay/$200 at a store but will be eventually included by government mandate on newly manufactured sets) and an outdoor antenna (by federal law a homeowners association must allow them, however apartment folks without roof access are out of luck) and count my savings.

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Er, George — since you left more or less the same comment on my site, I am going to assume you are actually spam from a store that sells HDTV products. Otherwise I can’t understand why you seem to have totally missed my point that the content of network tv is garbage, and that has nothing to do with how good the picture looks. Pretty, painted-up excrement still stinks, George.

Andrea, I can vouch for George that he’s not a spammer; I think he just misunderstood the main idea of what you were saying.

Programming content on TV in general is dictated by the ignorant people who watch it from day to day. Most smart folks have turned from TV to books or the internet. I hope I have insulted a TV addict or two into KILLING YOUR TV forever and using it only in case of an emergency. I know because I’m in the industry and I’m trained to ‘brainwash’ you.

I gave up on cable/broadcast TV eight years ago and turned my television into a monitor for my VCR and DVD player.
I sometimes feel a twinge of desire for The Discovery Channel, but I lie down until it goes away.

George on October 8, 2004 at October 8, 2004 - 1:44 pm said:

An antenna is a good way to watch tv–if you are willing to get an outdoor model. It can’t improve the content of the programing, but the picture is crystal clear, even more so with an HDTV tuner. It’s also a good way to save money if don’t watch much television or find that you mostly use cable to get a better picture for the networks. The $40-$100+ a month you pay could instead buy the dvd sets of your favorite cable shows with money to spare. For me it’s a no brainer to spend the money on HDTV tuner ($100 on ebay/$200 at a store but will be eventually included by government mandate on newly manufactured sets) and an outdoor antenna (by federal law a homeowners association must allow them, however apartment folks without roof access are out of luck) and count my savings.
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Andrea Harris on October 9, 2004 at October 9, 2004 - 6:48 pm said:

Er, George — since you left more or less the same comment on my site, I am going to assume you are actually spam from a store that sells HDTV products. Otherwise I can’t understand why you seem to have totally missed my point that the content of network tv is garbage, and that has nothing to do with how good the picture looks. Pretty, painted-up excrement still stinks, George.
D.C. Thornton on October 10, 2004 at October 10, 2004 - 3:05 am said:

Andrea, I can vouch for George that he’s not a spammer; I think he just misunderstood the main idea of what you were saying.
chuck on October 10, 2004 at October 10, 2004 - 5:59 pm said:

Programming content on TV in general is dictated by the ignorant people who watch it from day to day. Most smart folks have turned from TV to books or the internet. I hope I have insulted a TV addict or two into KILLING YOUR TV forever and using it only in case of an emergency. I know because I’m in the industry and I’m trained to ‘brainwash’ you.
Toren on October 11, 2004 at October 11, 2004 - 9:08 pm said:

I gave up on cable/broadcast TV eight years ago and turned my television into a monitor for my VCR and DVD player.
I sometimes feel a twinge of desire for The Discovery Channel, but I lie down until it goes away.