Tuning Out

A small but growing number of people are giving up TV, for good.

Man carrying a broken television
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When Pope Francis recently confessed to a reporter that he stopped watching television 25 years ago, it reminded me that several of my friends had gone TV-free as well. I recollect them sharing the news with great braggadocio. One would have thought they were declaring their exit from a domestic terrorist cell. My oh-so-media-savvy buddies had quit TV? It seemed totally improbable.

And so it was. It turns out that most Americans who boast about “cutting the cord” are not dumping their TV sets at the curb. What they’re doing, like my pals, is canceling their cable — or satellite — TV contracts. Not such a major move, but a nice cost savings. You can still watch lots of TV programming these days on your computer or TV by subscribing to an online streaming service. Netflix is currently the most popular of those.

There is, however, a tiny subset of the population that has adopted a true zero-tolerance policy when it comes to television. Who are these people? According to Marina Krcmar, a Wake Forest University professor who wrote the book Living Without the Screen, the TV averse fall into three categories. The first group, which includes religious conservatives, simply detests the content, thinking it too sexual or violent. The second group believes that TV viewing disrupts family life. And the third, which tends to harbor a free-flowing countercultural bias, rejects outright the very notion of a TV industry. “They don’t like Hollywood, they don’t like being treated as consumers,” Krcmar told me.

Not surprisingly, intellectual elites got a head start on that trend. Listen to what was said about TV by none other than Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon professor who wrote the best-selling book The Last Lecture. In 2007 following his terminal cancer diagnosis, he called out TV as the enemy of productivity. “If you really want to have time back in your life,” he told an audience at the University of Virginia, “unplug [your TV] and put it in a closet and put a blanket over it.”

If you really want to have time back in your life, unplug your TV and put it in a closet and put a blanket over it."—Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch

Being ill, as Pausch was at the time, invariably helps set life in perspective. My friend Laura Schiff, a former journalist who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2008, appreciates that point all too well. “Television always felt like a waste of time,” she told me the other day. When her old TV failed, she opted not to replace it. “No regrets. Without TV, I get a much deeper understanding of the world and what’s going on around me.” The amazing irony: Schiff’s late father, Arthur Schiff, was the genius behind such memorable TV marketing catchphrases as “Act now and you’ll also receive …” and “But wait, there’s more!”

For some Americans, there is no “more.” There is already way too, too much — too much onscreen sex, too much stupid programming, too many commercials for products no one needs (the Snuggie, anyone?). Most of all — and indisputably — “TV robs us of our time, our most precious asset,” as author Joshua Fields Millburn said in his acclaimed memoir, Everything That Remains.

Few will be shocked, then, to learn that even Krcmar, the Wake Forest communications professor, has given up on TV. No more cable. Occasionally she and her husband will watch something via Netflix.

People who have sworn off television “are highly contemptuous of the programs,” Krcmar told me. “They think of themselves as unique and iconoclastic.” She stresses that she’s not gone quite that far. Yet.

A few nights ago, coincidentally, an iconoclast who knows I’m an unregenerate watcher of TV, sent a text message that more or less sums up where we’re headed in the 21st century. “TV?” he wrote to me, mockingly. “So 2014.”

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Comments

  1. Excellent article. Although I personally have not ‘cut the cord’ I cancelled Time-Warner cable and just have the black box. Ironically I’m getting a lot more stations than when I had TW, and for free. 3 of my favorites include Decades, Cozi-TV and Antenna. So it’s nice having these options, especially for a weekend binge of classic TV shows here and there for a few hours.

    Still, I’m watching a lot less TV than I used to. There’s so little worth watching, and very little leisure time as it is, not to mention today’s unprecedented stress levels. Television itself by and large is just another source of it I don’t need. The computer can offer me websites of of guided imagery with soothing sounds of peace and tranquility.

    Even with the select few shows I watch on prime time, the commercials overall have gotten much louder, more abrasive, and often the same ones run during every commercial break. The telecommunication ones are still among the worst for terrible decibel levels. The mute button is a must.

    Typical ads in the 1970’s-’90s were not like they are now. Even “quiet” ones like ‘Trivago’ are shown SO much they’re abrasive just for the mere overkill. Yes, I got the message. If I want the best price for a hotel I’ll check it out. Enough already! I am looking forward to the new season of ‘The Amazing Race’ where the contestants are under the stress, not me.

  2. My grandmother got SEP and I read it and to day at 84 I look forward to receiving it, Keep up the good work LLS.

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