Why Not Turn the Thing Off?

By age 80 the average American will have spent nearly eleven years watching television.

by Louis Lotz

I don't watch television. I haven't watched TV in more than a decade. I didn't see the final episode of The Sopranos, or any of the preceding episodes. I have never seen Deal or No Deal, Heroes, E. R., Ugly Betty, or Sex and the City. I hear people talk about Grey's Anatomy, but I've never seen it. I've never seen L. A. Law, Desperate Housewives, or CSI. Come to think of it, I don't even know what CSI stands for. I never watched an episode of Friends, and I still don't know who shot J. R. I've never seen Survivor, 24, Lost, or The Apprentice. I know that American Idol is some kind of talent competition, but I've never seen it. I listen to the radio, I read newspapers and news magazines, but I don't watch TV.

It's not as though I feel some great moral revulsion about television. I don't. No doubt TV pumps a lot of sewage into the living rooms of the Republic. But there is good programming, too...

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