Pauls Rants & Revelations

A coworker of my wifes commented once on a show he saw the previous night. My wife listened and went about her work and when he asked her a question about it, she responded “We dont have a TV”.

Her coworker was, to say the least, flabbergasted. He said something to the effect of “You might as well not even breathe” (and honey, if you are reading this, correct me if I am wrong). Upon hearing this I thought “how sad for him”. You see, its been nearly 3 years since we have gotten rid of television in our home. We have hardly noticed it at all and I started thinking about what we do instead of watching the “boob tube”; which, funnily enough, it is pretty much become nowadays.

My answer; mostly, we read. We go for walks. We go to archery, play soccer, bingo, dinner with family and, more often than not, we talk about events, life and general goings-ons in the world. We also more often than not have the heated debate on particular topics. But this is perfectly fine since I am usually right (unless my wife tells me I am not).

After considering all we do without television, I started to think if we are spending too much money on things that are not television. For instance; a decent tv will cost you around $200 but you only pay for this once. If you want to watch anything, it’s usually $40 – $50 a month for cable access, plus any of the pay-per-view items you order. But lets just say $50 a month on average. Add in $15 a month in electricity to power the thing and you are looking at $65 a month for only one, non-interactive form of entertainment in your home. Does that seem worth it?

Lets look at what we (my family that is) spend on non-tv things. We read. A lot. So much so that we have a library card and every 2 weeks or so get 10-20 books from the library. The cost of this is in the gas it takes to get to the library (we were a little bummed at this since the library use to be walking distance from our house, but no matter). So our chief form of entertainment (reading) costs us about $2 in gas. Not a bad tradeoff, actually. We also buy new books (such as the latest Harry Potter) so if we average 1 new hardbound book a month, thats $20 more. That’s $22 so far.

We also have internet access with is $50 a month. But I use this for work chiefly so the “entertainment” portion of this is about $5 for surfing the net and, on occasion downloading episodes of Fosters Home for Imaginary friends (my sons favorite show and, well… mine too). An entire season costs about $20 through iTunes so if we average 1 a week (usually on the weekends) thats $8 more. Add electricity; another $5 lets say.

So far we have $22 for books, $18 for digital entertainment.

So what about news? Well, I can’t speak for my wife, but I have an RSS feed from the local paper and feeds from Digg, Slashdot, Google News, MSNBC and a dozen others. I get all the news I can handle and certainly more than is in the local daily paper. This, however, costs nothing, so I won’t count it.

And our hobbies? Well, walking if free. It costs about $10 in gas for me to go to archery and another $10 for my wife to go to soccer every month. Dinners with family are actually saving us money since we are not paying for food, so take back the $15 (3 a month which would cost around $5 a meal) as a credit to put to our entertainment.

Now what are we at: $22 for books, $18 for digital entertainment, $20 for our hobbies. Thats $60. Subtract our $15 credit and we are left with $45 for our non-tv entertainment.

TV: $65; Reading, hobbies, digital entertainment: $45

So we save $20 a month and get far more bang for our buck. But its not just about money saving (or spending). Let look at the more emotional, physical, and psychological aspects of a TV free life. We talk and interact with each other instead of sitting on the sofa watching tv where the only talk that happens is an occasional outburst when someones favorite contestant is eliminated. We go outside and do stuff instead of watching other people do stuff. Our bodies are moving and doing things instead of at rest. We are tired at the end of the day not because our brains are exhausted from “info-tainment”, but from running around for hours (and anyone who says soccer is easy has never played; my wife is my hero for running around for a solid half hour a couple a times a game).

My kids also benefit, I think greatly, from not having an easy to access form of entertainment. They have to use their brains to think of things to do (sometimes after a helpful suggestion from us). Often times they are running around the house making pillow forts, jumping from the couch, and generally making havoc of everything. This is stressful (as it always happens when i finish picking things up) but in hindsight its great in that they are entertaining themselves and having fun. They play with their toys and with mom and dad and only occasionally watch a movie (usually at their cousins house) or tv.

Aside from the monetary gains there are also several gains physically and mentally from ignoring the beast of television. I’m not against television, mind you. I watch it every so often and I watch movies and such, but as for the primary means of information and entertainment, well, there are a lot better sources available nowadays that are far better and/or far cheaper.

Do you still think there is a place for television in our homes (and bedrooms and kitchens and cars)? Do you think that you really need television to get by in life? I think not, but that, as they say, is my opinion. Whats yours?

-Cheers