TV Everywhere

I was a cable guy for a while, and let me tell you, there are few things that people care more about than whether or not they have cable. The supreme irony of it all is that I don't have, and have never had, cable. In fact, I'm not terribly fond of television. I've been starting all of my views recently with background like this because I'm a wimp, but also because I'm making an effort to be as honest about my biases as possible. Mostly the wimp part though.

I worked in houses that didn't have working plumbing, houses where there was no furniture besides the television, houses inhabited by people who obviously had to choose between paying the water bill or the cable bill. And you can guess what they chose. People care about television. A lot.

Well you know what? It's not healthy. It's not good to have a television in every room of your house. There's been a lot of press given recently to the idea that email addiction isn't healthy, but when you can't be in a room (including the bathroom) of your house without having a television, that's not healthy.

When I was younger I used to wish that my family had two televisions, so we wouldn't fight over who got to watch it when. Now all I want is for the television to be exiled to some far corner. I'm not being holier than thou; I watch TV too, and I watch DVDs more often than that. I admit that I probably watch too much television, when you factor in all the things I watch. I think most people watch too much television. But I'm not crusading to remove television from the house. Far from it. I want it removed from rooms in the house where it doesn't belong.

Keep the TV in the den. Keep it in the TV room. I don't care. But I'm tired of trying to watch television where there are other people who don't want to watch it, just as I am tired of being the other person who doesn't want to watch. If there are no locations where you can go to be free from TV, it's not healthy. How many televisions do we really need?

Now we've got TV in our cars (that's safe, let me tell you), TV in restaurants (I can't stand those, and always so many of them), TV on street corners, TV everywhere. It used to be just one in bars, now it's twenty in every store. You can watch TV on your portable DVD player, or on your iPod, or what have you. You can't get away from it.

I guess this is just an extension of my, "we don't all need to be connected all the time," argument, but TV is particularly annoying because it seems to mean that we need to be entertained passively all the time. Passive entertainment is great. But all the time?

In closing, however, I would just like to say, on behalf of my underpaid and overworked ex-coworkers in the cable repair and installation industries, please have as many TVs as possible so they get paid more. I don't really believe it, and frankly I didn't when I was getting paid by the set, but on behalf of the cable guys and gals of the world, I'll say it.