That's a heartwarming news story if I ever saw one!
I do wonder what it is that's making the lumpen masses tune out.
Might it be the ever-diminishing quality of color TV programming? The ubiquity of offensive, inverted TV characters?
How about the escalating cost? Especially in this imploding economy...
The substitution effect in favor of Netflix, Headbook.com, Marginalizing Morons, and web-programming like Hulu.com?
Might it be that within our aging population, the 'old coots' are now soooo old that their increasing inability to *get the cable box and the TV both 'ON' at the same time* has made them fed up with Cablevision, Comcast, Charter, and Time Warner? Plus, a lot of them are literally dying off from the pig flu pandemic!
OR, could it possibly be that Americans are finally realizing that television is unadulterated *mind poison*?
My guess is the decline is due to all of the above - save perhaps the last one.
I'll tell you what....a funny thing happens when one terminates a lifetime of color TV ingestion.
You know how since public cigarette smoking has been essentially banned and taxed out of existence....you know how now when someone lights up 50 feet away you can instantly smell it on account of a newfound, conditioned hypersensitivity?
Well that's how my wife and I are now with the cacophony of a blaring television - it pollutes a room like a pack of burning Camels....or a juicy drive-by flatulation.
I can't stand CNN blasting in airport lounges and take immediate evasive action. Nor can I stand hearing that little TV blast away in the back of NYC taxis, in the barbershop, in doctors' waiting rooms, etc.
Shoot, a dozen years ago I could and did often sit at a table of 10 smokers and not care an iota.
And back then I would regularly enjoy watching lo-def color TV for hours on end...
3 comments:
I can't stand CNN blasting in airport lounges and take immediate evasive action. Nor can I stand hearing that little TV blast away in the back of NYC taxis, in the barbershop, in doctors' waiting rooms, etc.
I feel the same way. Sometimes I ask myself which I hate more-- the TSA molestation ritual, or having to sit in the airport lounge afterward, trying to focus on my reading or even just simple quiet contemplation, with the "news" on the TeeVee in the background blaring what I should be scared about this time, or how my Great Leaders are doing their utmost to take care of me.
Drives me nuts! You can NOT go anywhere in an airport without being bombarded with marketing and messaging of the audio/visual variety.
And those NYC cab TVs are similarly atrocious.
I refused to get a TV and buy cable in my apartment. For one, I can't afford it. For two, I have SO MANY books on my shelf to read, so many TV shows to watch on Hulu if I care to, on my time and my schedule and not the major networks and so many episodes of WineLibraryTV.com to catch up on, I just can't even fathom a television set in my place, destroying the quiet sense of civilization I've worked so hard to achieve.
Meanwhile, my parents are appalled, and I don't even know why because growing up they were always raging about the TV and how they thought we children of theirs watched too much of it. Just the other day I was talking to my dad and he was upset that I "still" don't have a TV in my place.
"What if people come over to visit you? What are they going to do? They might like to watch TV."
OMG? Are you kidding me? Then we'll talk, Dad, like normal people used to do one time not so long ago.
Yeesh!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-N5adYM7Kw
Watch this!
kfell
How interesting. We "cut the cord" when the kids were in grammar school.
That was 8 years and about 10K dollars ago, no regrets.
I wonder if more parents are realizing:
(a) they don't have time to watch anything themselves
(b) there is little worth watching (100 channels of junk ...)
(c) some of it is worse than junk, it's propaganda
(c) they are paying cable providers mucho dinero for the joy of policing their kids' viewing habits
Aside from that, it's great.
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