Hehe! Good post. I actu­ally have a TV but never watch it. Indeed “I don’t need a TV” is a good answer and I guess more and more peo­ple will come to that con­clu­sion with the digitalization/convergence of all media. Seems the next bet from the TV set pro­duc­ers to counter that will be 3D. Will be inter­est­ing to see whether that works for more than a niche audience.

But I don’t have a TV. When I am put in this sit­u­a­tion, just nod­ding and humor­ing some­one is worse. Sure, I have tried humor­ing peo­ple when they rec­om­mend a show, but then they ask about what I do watch. It looks even worse and is more painful when, after half a con­ver­sa­tion of humor­ing them, you have to admit you don’t have a TV. Then the per­son feels that much worse, as they just blab­bered on about what you were only pre­tend­ing to be inter­ested in.

As a mem­ber of the Nick­elodeon gen­er­a­tion myself, my rea­sons for not hav­ing a TV have much more to do with resent­ment towards TV net­works. Books do not mar­ket prod­ucts (tipi­cally). Art muse­ums do not pro­mote child­hood obe­sity. His­tory muse­ums do not give giants amount of air­time to peo­ple like Bil O’Reilly.

TV had a firm hold on my gen­er­a­tion for half my life, and it squeezed us for every penny they could get from us no mat­ter how evil the results were (remem­ber what TRL did to music?). I am happy other more inter­ac­tive media oppor­tu­ni­ties have come around to save future gen­er­a­tions from hav­ing to feel like lame wads because their fam­i­lies can’t afford to go to Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios in Orlando Florida. I am glad kids might not grow up think­ing Pizza Rolls are the same as food.

So I’m sorry you feel like I am being con­de­scend­ing by not hav­ing a TV. Maybe you should really be look­ing at why you are so self-conscious when oth­ers say they don’t have TVs. I do have a right not to have a TV, and I have a right not to have to lie to peo­ple about that fact.

I like your defense. It’s rough to be in a world where every­one has a TV and you don’t for aggra­va­tion of how it dom­i­nated your life pre­vi­ously. Under­stood. And you have made valiant efforts to try to make every­one in the room not uncom­fort­able with you not own­ing a TV. I com­mend you on that.

I’m not sug­gest­ing you or oth­ers lie about the fact. In fact, the argu­ment in this piece is that today you may be com­mended or seen as a media leader for not own­ing a TV. You’re on the cut­ting edge, an early adopter of new media con­sump­tion if you will. But prior to the world of Internet-TV con­ver­gence, this became a rather strong annoy­ance to the recip­i­ents. I appre­ci­ate all you did to not make it that way. But my ques­tion is when did you become a non-TV owner? Is it recent or has it been going on for more than a dozen years. If the for­mer then you’re a mem­ber of the advanced media con­sum­ing generation.

And yes, we can cre­ate exam­ples of bad TV (as you have done) as we can cre­ate exam­ples of what’s wrong with all other media. But hav­ing a long his­tory of not own­ing a TV is shun­ning the entire medium just because you hate Bill O’Reilly. Then again, today many con­sider it hip to not own a TV. So where do you lie? Are you hip or one who wipes away the whole medium for a few bad eggs or Pizza Rolls?

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Nice arti­cle, David. And yes, I com­pletely agree with you. It always irked me a lit­tle when I heard that phrase, since tele­vi­sion is just a medium for telling sto­ries. It’s unfair to judge the story by the medium. And of course, if some­one decries the inter­net, I always have the option of loudly scream­ing “Lud­dite” while point­ing to them and snap­ping a shocked photo of their mug with my iPhone which I will post to Flickr and later retweet. (ok, to be fair… I don’t have an iPhone. But trust me… it’s finan­cial and not at all based on an aver­sion to Macs)

I love this dialogue.

Here’s been my divid­ing line: it’s hard to not sound like an ass­hole if I say, ” I don’t watch TV”. So I’ve gen­er­ally said ” I don’t have a TV”.
Hope­fully I sound deprived or kooky but not supe­rior.
I try to not tell oth­ers the rea­sons why if I can help it because I get blank stares.
It’s not just what’s on that we’re watch­ing, but what’s on that no-one is pay­ing atten­tion to. I think it’s creepy to just have the TV on for back­ground noise, to com­fort us or to drug chil­dren into sleep­ing.
Oddly, peo­ple try to give me TVs at least once a year; no one has ever tried to give me a computer.

If peo­ple do ask why, I say because TV shows me what they want me to see and my com­puter shows me what I want to see”. I real­ize that is not strictly true these days when TV is more post­mod­ern and cyn­i­cal then the past. Also, we are now closer to the demo­graphic to be pan­dered to (adults with jobs, heads of house­holds, young adults with dis­pos­able income, young par­ents etc), so pro­gram­ming is more skewed to tastes sim­i­lar to mine then say in 1989.
That being said, I see no rea­son why I have to be a cap­tive audi­ence to anyone’s adver­tis­ing any more than the con­stant sat­u­ra­tion you get walk­ing to the bus stop.
I’ll watch the worst crap on TV with my mouth hang­ing open given the oppor­tu­nity. It’s bet­ter if I don’t give myself the option of piss­ing away any more time on some­thing passive-I some­times zone out with net­flix movies after work.
At this point I just want to limit my expo­sure to all the fran­tic activ­ity and ad frenzy when I’m home relax­ing.
Great dis­cus­sion, interesting.

I say I don’t have a TV all the time. I grew up with­out one.

That doesn’t mean in any way shape or form I don’t *watch* TV. I love the medium! I watch the shows I like online. I write spec scripts as a hobby. I took a tv writ­ing class in col­lege. I fol­low my favourite showrun­ners on Twitter.

The only rea­son I say ‘I don’t have a TV’, is to let the per­son whom I’m in a con­ver­sa­tion with know that I didn’t catch the broad­cast. I didn’t catch House at 8 or Bones at 10 or what­ever — so no, I haven’t seen yet how adorable Bore­anaz was in that suit or what a great actor Hugh Lau­rie was in what­ever scene. But I will!

And no, I don’t think it sounds pompous whatsoever.

[…] Is it still pompous to announce, ‘I don’t have a TV … […]

Inter­est­ing to note that the peo­ple who are defend­ing the phrase “I don’t watch TV” as not being pompous are the ones say­ing it. The peo­ple who are the recip­i­ents of that line have his­tor­i­cally felt that it’s pompous (again, I argue that’s changing).

It’s easy to claim that some­thing is not pompous if you’re the one say­ing it. It’s a totally dif­fer­ent story if you’re the one hear­ing it.

If you are proud of not own­ing a tele­vi­sion, yet watch TV shows on Net­flix or Hulu, it seems pompous to me. If you don’t have a TV and don’t watch TV shows, go ahead and say you don’t have a TV and hate tele­vi­sion — we’re all dif­fer­ent. I guess I’m 180 degrees from your point, David.

I have issues with Net­Flix because of their online popup ads that evade popup block­ers, so I’d rather DVR my shows and fast-forward through the com­mer­cials. Also, kids can get plenty of expo­sure to unaf­ford­able vaca­tion ads and unhealthy con­sum­ables in the right-hand and ban­ner ads on pretty much every site. The Inter­net is more active to con­sume than TV, but in my opin­ion it is not inher­ently bet­ter or less invidious.

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