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Can Your Life Be Richer Without TV?

From MSN Money. Without TV COMPLETELY, or just moving the entertainment to another source: the computer? So many of us are under the illusion that they're TV-free, but then they watch Hulu and other alternative TV sites on the internet.

If this is you, you're not TV-free--you're just free of the black box (and the cable/satellite bill).

"Want to save some serious green? Stop watching TV.

What to do instead of watching TV:
Cutting the cable or ditching the dish can recoup more than just the monthly service fee. Television-free folks say:

* They spend less when they have less exposure to ads and product placement.

* Their children don't continually shriek for treats, trips and toys (see above).

* They feel better physically and emotionally. The hours formerly spent on channel surfing turned into exercise, volunteering, family time and, oh yeah, getting enough sleep."

...

"I don't feel the need to rush to the public library to borrow Season 3 of "The Closer." It's not that I don't like TV. It's that other things have replaced it in my life."

...

"Those who eschew the tube know they're swimming against the tide. Boy, do they know it. Leigh Henderson, a Manhattan management consultant who also teaches at Baruch College, says her students are horrified.

"They look at me like, 'How can you do it? How can you possibly live without a TV?'" says Henderson, who gave away her bulky old television in March 2007 during an apartment renovation.

Her plan was to buy a flat-screen model. But Henderson liked not being "inundated" with advertising and realized that a lot of programming was, well, dumb.

Since then, she's noticed her students often wail that they don't have time to do all that course reading yet can tell her all about the programs she's missing. Henderson has friends who won't go out because a particular show is on. And at a recent family reunion, one relative watched cooking programs rather than interact with people he hadn't seen in years.

"That just reinforced it for me," Henderson says. "(Television) isn't evil. It just shouldn't be the top priority."

...

""Once I shut the TV off, I realized how much of my time was being wasted," Holden says. "There's a lot of world out there beyond the TV screen."

Now his TV watching consists of "Jeopardy!" on Hulu -- sometimes.

P.S. Holden's electric bill has dropped at least 15%.

Question to consider: How would you improve your life (and maybe other people's lives) if you weren't watching TV?"

...or weren't playing videos or video games, or wrapped up in Netflix or Hulu? My satellite contract's up next month, and we may just let it go--most of our shows are available on the web. I've been dragging out and washing quilting fabric that's been in boxes for the last 8 years--maybe this is the year I actually finish a quilt! :)

"Others who've limited or deleted TV offer these tips:

* Go cold turkey. It's not so bad after the first week.

* Or don't. Allow yourself one show or one hour of viewing per day. Gradually reduce viewing over several weeks.

* Try new things. Be ready to fill the hours you once spent watching. The people I interviewed suggested reading, exercising, volunteering, playing board games, taking classes, playing outdoors with the kids, and cooking and savoring nice meals. (And, yeah, going online to watch a little bit of TV now and then.)

* Bank the savings. If you were paying for cable, set aside what you'd be spending. It could go toward a vacation, a special purchase or a college fund.

* Out of sight, out of mind. Move the TV out of the common area. If it's not in your face all the time, you won't automatically move to turn it on."

I've found that more is less when it comes to TV--most of those 200+ channels are taken up by non-stop revolving marketing (like the Brazil Butt-Lift/Sobongo channel), and the amount of commercials between actual TV shows is increasing. Sometimes, it seems there's more commercials than programming! In an hour-long show, there's only 40 minutes of actual TV show--the rest is commercials (a third of that hour). For every "hour" of programming you think you're getting, a third of it goes to ads and marketing crap nobody wants. Imagine what you could get done in all those third-of-an-hours?

...and to think we actually PAY to bring the unwanted marketing into our homes!

I spent my teenage years without TV, so I've been there before. I just haven't been there since... :( My radio got one hell of a workout back then.

Posted by Cute at 6:03 PM

Labels: financial (non-tax), social issues