Living without Television. Arghhh!!

Don’t panic I can help.

Being a supply teacher and also writing in my spare time for Pure Content keeps me pretty busy as you can imagine.  What free time I do have I like to make the most of.  Having realised that I seemed to be spending too much time in front of the television (often nodding off to sleep), I suggested to my wife a trial period without the TV.  This prompted a shocked reaction initially, but after a quite lengthy discussion she started to warm to the idea.  Having agreed that far too much of our time was being spent on watching television instead of doing something useful and constructive we began to wonder why we hadn’t thought of taking this step before.  But before we went ahead and removed the TV we asked ourselves some questions: did we regret the payment going out of our account each month for the TV licence and the service we were subscribing to? Were we fed up with the declining standards of television broadcasting and the puerile programmes that were dished up each evening for our so-called entertainment?   The answers to these questions were in the affirmative so we decided: the box went.

Let me assure you that it is possible to live without a television in your house.  I know this to be true because I have now been in that happy state for the past twelve months.  I have not gone mad, the children seem to be normal well-balanced kids and my wife hasn’t left me!  As a bonus the house is somewhat quieter as the children no longer fight over the remote control.  Even the dog seems more relaxed, for some reason he used to howl whenever Jonathan Ross or Gordon Ramsay came on.  Okay, I must be completely honest here and admit that there are some programmes that I miss, but I make up for their absence in other ways.

You may now be wondering what we all do in the evenings.  It is very simple really, we do what people did before the television was invented. We listen to some of the excellent radio stations that are available free to everyone once they have purchased a receiver; I feed my obsession with Jazz and my wife fulfils her need for quality classical music.  The eldest of our three children loves the popular music available on the myriad of commercial stations and the younger two thoroughly enjoy the BBC’s output for their age group.  They have also recently started to make use of the radio player available via the computer.  As a family we are now all so heavily into radio that I have invested in a Wi-Fi receiver that has revealed a new world of quality broadcasting from all over the planet.  We are also now in the fortunate position of each owning an iPod.  These have been gradually acquired via the route of Christmas present requests and some careful saving by the children.  The ingenious little machines have now been stocked via iTunes with the favourite music of each of the owners.

Originally intended for the use of the younger members of the household, I also purchased a piano that now stands in our dining room. This was successful to a degree in that one of them has taken a great interest and is now having lessons. This is our firstborn who we think bears a striking resemblance to Jools Holland.  We are hoping that he develops the same skills at the keyboard and becomes extremely rich thereby ensuring that my wife and I have a comfortable old age. Not to be outdone my wife has now signed up for lessons with the same teacher.  Did I warn you that not having a television does incur expense in other ways?

The cinema is now high on our list of priorities, as is the theatre. This can get a bit expensive especially if all the family wish to go together to the latest blockbuster movie or to the excellent pantomime that runs over Christmas at our local theatre.  Books; how could I not mention books?  The local library provides a constant supply of quality reading for all of us and is of course completely free.  We also take a national and local newspaper each day and the family tends to spend a fair bit of any spare cash on magazines for us ‘grown ups’ and comics for the young ones.

Needless to say the Internet is heavily utilised in our household and the children find it very useful for entertainment and homework purposes.  They have all become YouTube,  Facebook and MySpace aficionados and have also recently discovered a question and answer website called Blurtit that is getting a great deal of attention from them at the moment.

So have I convinced you that living without television is possible?  If you do decide to take this step into the unknown I am confident that you will quickly find ways to fill that perceived void.  A great unforeseen bonus as far as we were concerned is that the family now talk more together. We also find that the dog gets us all out into the countryside as a family group rather than as it used to be with me taking him out on my own.

So to sum up: not having a television in the house has been found to have pluses that have far outweighed the minuses for us.  Everyone is different of course and this may not be for you.  But why not give it a try.  Take up that hobby again that you used to enjoy so much, rediscover the radio and soak up books by the score. We haven’t regretted it yet.

I wonder what happened in Lost.   Did they ever find out what that island was all about?

Peter.