About (about) a decade with (basically) no TV.

                I watched the Oscars on Sunday. No, this isn’t some post-awards rant. I didn’t have any favourites (with the exception of Christoph Waltz in Django). I wasn’t cheering or betting. I just really like it as a show. One of America’s biggest, most wasteful self-loves and the absolute zenith of what’s wrong with art and yet, and yet, I have always been captivated by it. I think I’ve seen every Oscars telecast for the past fifteen years or so. Rarely miss a second of it, even when they’re (and they usually are) predictable and dull.

                I like watching hockey, CFL football, some NFL, and smatterings of other sports. Winter Olympics. I watch it, but unless it’s playoffs or my Habs or Riders, I usually am busy working on something else, reading a book, something. Not often able to sit through an entire sporting event, save the playoffs again. Still, I can’t tell you the last time in the past twenty years I’ve missed the Stanley Cup being awarded.

                I used to have shows. Like most folks, I grew up watching whatever was on. Sitcoms, and cop or lawyer dramas. Danger Bay. I watched a fair amount of TV as a kid. I was raised on The Simpsons. I recall that just before I left Canada I was hooked on this teaching show called Boston Public. That would’ve been about a decade ago.

                Like most folks again, I probably felt guilty about the amount of TV I watched. There was a lot of crap, and there was a lot better I could’ve been doing. Great form of procrastination. But even despite the gruelling work of university, I was able to get in my fair share of the boob tube.

                Then, about a decade ago, I moved to Asia for a bit. Needless to say, North American prime-time TV was hardly as prevalent there. The major shows were hard to track down. Some of the big reality shows of the time were on, and lots of reruns. Had trouble finding my precious Simpsons, and forget about Rick Mercer or 22 Minutes. This was 2002, so there wasn’t a lot of online TV. I remembered there being an overabundance of Sex and the City and Two Guys and a Girl reruns. Big events like the Oscars and hockey playoffs were still miraculously available. Mostly there were just a lot of movies for the English-speaking public.

                My time there came and went, and I basically fell out of any sort of a TV routine. Got my news from the Internet, saw movies, read a lot as I always have.

                When I moved back to Canada, I just had better stuff to do. For a decade now, I’ve been functioning pretty much TV-free. I watch some sports, some news (though most comes from Internet or radio), and the odd event like the Oscars. Really, that’s one of the only events like that I see. Not the Grammys, not even the Junos. And some of that watching is half-hearted at best. Most evenings that don’t involve me doing my job after my kids go to bed involve reading and writing. Running. Playing guitar. 

I don’t miss out on water-cooler discussions of the latest antics of The Walking Dead because I don’t have a water cooler job and also because it just seems so long a commitment to get excited about a zombie show once a week. Got better things to do. I’m thankful that Game of Thrones is available for download and only ten episodes per season, so I can watch it all in about four weekend evenings with my wife.

                My laptop clock says it’s 8:02pm. I have no idea what’s on right now. The only show schedules I’m aware of the  are, say, Grey’s Anatomy, which I know keeps my wife up late on Thursdays. I’ve never seen an episode.

                I think it’s fitting that I got out of watching pretty much anything on TV around the same time the reality TV craze got swinging, because that’s a low ebb for even the most brainless medium we have access to.

                I didn’t quit watching TV to make some sort of a stand. I’m very happy that I don’t, but I’m not lording it over anyone. Unless you watch the Bachelorette or shows about people bidding or storage lockers or Texans hunting pigs. Then I am, because you’re an idiot.

                No, my point is that I cut TV out of my life and really didn’t notice. Freed up a whole bunch more time, I guess. Have more to my routine than sitting on my ass watching sex jokes. I’d get rid of the physical device itself altogether but, as I said, I like some of the above.

                I hear people talking about Netflix and Apple TV or whatever the latest thing is. Complicated cable packages geared to you as a person. When I say I’m not interested in such stuff I’m often viewed as behind the times, like an analog monkey trying to still run with rabbit ears. Fact is, I just don’t care.

                Woke up the other morning and realized, “Huh, been ten years since I cared about TV.”

                Just got better things to do.  

TV Enters the Museum of Irrelevance.

The same week that the CRTC announces that TV providers should be able to gouge Canadians, I read a report that says your average adult is watching far less of the boob-tube than in decades past. Funny. We're not watching less because we've rediscovered the world outside our doors or because there's been a resurgence in burying ourselves in the wonders of bound text (I was at a very depressing department meeting recently where we were shown some numbers of declining reading-rates in young people, and the repercussions).

No, indeed, we're watching less TV--that is, less of the actual machine called a television--because we're doing so much more of what you're doing right now: surfing and interacting with the Internet. No surprise there, I'm sure. The second article--the one reporting the decline in TV viewership was dubious in tone (strange, as it was print media mourning the decline of television) for it made out as if this transition is regrettable, a decline--like the loss wasn't so much of ratings but of that valued family interaction time where everybody gathers around to watch he who loses the biggest.

Oh, relax, my soapbox will remain stowed.

When I was in my early twenties, my TV consumption involved The Simpsons (I am a child of the 90s), some sports--chiefly hockey, token doses of Muchmusic, the channels Discovery, History and National Geography, and then bits and pieces of "what's on." I was not above mindless remote-flicking.

Then I moved to Taiwan, and though I still had some access to English-language television, it was often dated, always American, and usually out of sync with my teaching schedule. I just lost touch. I didn't even bother following anything online, and after a decade and a half, even my diligent Sunday-night pursuits of the yellow-skinned animated tomfoolery fell by the wayside.

When I came back to the land of Rick Mercer, Hannah Gartner and Don Cherry, I wasn't interested anymore. See, I had discovered what could be done with that time that's wasted at the TV. Still no soapbox: my wife has her shows and she's welcome to them, I mean that I simply can't sit still for an hour-long CSI. I still love my hockey, but often I'm doing something else while it's on. 'Cause let's face it, even the best games have some serious amounts of lettuce on the bun. Fortunately, when I returned to Canada, reality TV had really taken off and stupid was the order of the day. For the first six months I didn't even own a TV, and for at least a year after that I only had rabbit ears. I probably would still have the same 19-inch box my parents bought me in university if I didn't like taking in the odd movie--why can I stand movies? Enclosed narrative, no commercials, nobody addresses the foibles of other characters to the camera on Day 12.

I like that we have to interact with everything we access online, rather than just receive it. Oh yes, you're saying, "How much interacting is there in watching a Youtube montage of Family Guy fart gags set to 'Never Gonna Give You Up'?" But, c'mon, I don't want to beat up too much on the ugly stepchildren that are reality TV and professional sports, instead consider the drivel spewed out by your average sitcom or E-talk tripe. Interacting nothing--are you remembering to blink?

Yes, endless hours of anything is bad for you. "My name is Paul and I have a Wikipedia problem." I'm one of those guys who ends up reading about the South-Saharan tiger lily's pollination evolution and wondering how I got there from reading about the Quebec Act. But, the CRTC has basically approved price-gouging as what I see as a bailout technique. Sounds to me like the soon-to-be obsolete scratching at the walls as they slide.

Welcome, Television, to the Museum of Irrelevance. This display is entitled Media Crushed by the Internet, you'll find your spot between the Music Industry and the Newspaper.