three years - television free

I haven't watched TV in about three years unless I'm out and there's a TV in a restaurant which I can't avoid. I can watch anything I want on DVD of course and put those into the computer for movie nights about once a month. We especially like Brett's version of Sherlock Holmes through Granada here.

But we sold our television when we left Los Angeles because it was never on unless we were using a TV gaming console like wii or PS2. So we sold it. We haven't missed it one bit. The side-effects of leaving TV out of our home have been really noticeable. But the biggest has been financial solvency. Even without a job in the past six months, we have still managed to pay down our debts consistently, despite moving states and all the costs that entails. For this, I have to point to an ad-free and pressure-free existence which TV would have generated if we'd kept it on in our home.

Without commercials we don't get half as inspired to buy things advertised now. We've fallen away from the "beautiful person" model that is shown all the time on TV, so we are less compelled to be "beautiful people who have it all." We now know that we already are beautiful people and we can have what we really want, as opposed to what is shoved on us by an advertiser.

I'm also far less prone to random fits of depression and sporadic make-overs because as Neil Postman put it: I've stopped watching a make-believe world that so many people desperately want to believe is true reality. It also helped that I worked for a while in Hollywood and I know that I don't have a make-up crew following me around on my errands and I can't say CUT when I make a mistake and cover it up.

I have to add that my attention span has increased from thirty second spots, and forty-three-minutes-and-twenty-seven seconds cut time for airing programs on US television to actual long hourly conversations and three or four chapters at a time of book reading. I can even listen to someone else read aloud and follow the discourse.

It probably helps that I didn't grow up with TV, but of course when visiting girlfriends I got all the TV I ever wanted at their houses as a child, so I never felt deprived of pop culture references. Now there's even TV in the schools, in restaurants, in day care, and even in hair salons and stores . . . so I'm not sure any kid could ever truly be deprived of it.

I also know how hard it is to go cold turkey. My husband watched TV a lot in his family, growing up TV was his friend, but over the past three years he gradually moved away from it. He replaced it with school at first, where 72-hour long projects cut out any TV time if he wanted a good grade. And then it didn't seem as interesting when he had the time for TV again. He'd replaced it with other pursuits.

It is interesting for us to watch TV now. We stare at it and feel totally disassociated from it after three years without it. We cannot relate. It also feels highly manipulative to us both when it's on.

Two good books on TV are "Amusing Ourselves to Death" and "Four Reasons for the Abolishment of Television." You will never see TV the same way again afterward.