Get Rid of TV: Advice on My Quest

[Weave]

Has anyone tried to completely rid their life of television? I am on a quest myself to do so, and I am finding it difficult. I just can't help Seinfeld, and Family Guy. Any words of advice?

 

[verty]

Ok, why you are trying to stop watching TV? Can you give a positive reason? What did watching TV do for you, that you will now potentially miss or need to find replacements? What replacements will you find?

For instance, if you enjoy watching comedy shows which seems to be true, what will you replace that with, or will you strictly only watch comedy shows perhaps? Will you buy Seinfeld on DVD or whatever?

 

[radou]

Has anyone tried to completely rid their life of television? I am on a quest myself to do so, and I am finding it difficult. I just can't help Seinfeld, and Family Guy. Any words of advice?

So what? Watch Seinfeld and Family Guy, or whatever. They don't last the whole day. I.e. reduce the number of shows you want to watch to some reasonable amount of time. I reduced my TV-time to a minimum, which is watching The Sopranos once a week and some movie, perhaps. I'm lucky because the TV program is so bad, that you'd have to be really brainwashed or braindamaged to watch it.

 

[George Jones]

I spent four of the years from 1997 to 2003 living single, without housemates, and without a TV. For two of these years, I had a TV because I rented a furnished apartment.

I read novels for in-house entertainment. (edit: including some "literature", but mainly just stuff that I found fun to read, e.g. murder mysteries)

I got married in 2003, and my wife and I now have a TV, but we have decided not to get cable or satellite. We receive a few strong signals, but because of the hills and rockfaces in our area, the video is unwatchable (audio is OK). We do occasionally rent DVD movies, but it has more than a month since our TV was on.

We're talking about renting some movies today, but the lengths of our "to do" lists (incuding, for me, composing a lengthy technical post on thrown watches) might prevent this.

 

[JasonRox]

So what? Watch Seinfeld and Family Guy, or whatever. They don't last the whole day. I.e. reduce the number of shows you want to watch to some reasonable amount of time. I reduced my TV-time to a minimum, which is watching The Sopranos once a week and some movie, perhaps. I'm lucky because the TV program is so bad, that you'd have to be really brainwashed or braindamaged to watch it.

True. I agree.

Some people think I watch lots of TV for some reason. But if they took a second, and thought about the shows that I "know" about, that they all play within diner time, like 4-6pm. That's because I like to watch TV when I'm cooking and eating, and when I come home from work/school to relax a bit. After that, I have no idea about anything. In fact, I didn't even know the show "House" existed until a little while ago.

 

[Chi Meson]

Has anyone tried to completely rid their life of television? I am on a quest myself to do so, and I am finding it difficult. I just can't help Seinfeld, and Family Guy. Any words of advice?

We have no cable, and there is no signal where we live. Whenever I visit my parents or some other family with cable, I get my "fix" of surfing in about one hour. In this time I become stisfied that we do not need TV. I can NOT abide the commercials!

We have a DVD player, and we subscribe to Netflix. Anything on TV that is worth watch WILL be out on DVD within a year. THe only thing that you might miss is sports. Luckily, I don't care for football, basketball, or baseball, or golf, or... anything really except the Tour de France (This I tape in our neighbor's basement).

I recommend simply cancelling cable or whatever you have. Subscribe to a local video store, or Netflix. Put Seinfeld and Family Guy in the queue and watch them when you want to.