What are you watchin' on the TeeVee?

[Bluebrew]

I guess no one would argue that TV is a great medium with great potential that is not fully realized. It certainly has it's finer moments.

Some years ago I was shut in due to an accident so we got the cable TV. Very quickly I was glued to the Box. I soon developed that mouth - open glassy-eyed watch anything stare. My speech became typical of a TV junkie where you use the limited vocabulary of "Yeah... Yeah OK" in a very soft and low voice. I stopped reading and doing healthy activities. This continued until I got better and started to travel again. But you can never really get the monkey off you back. You have to make an effort. So now when I am home I limit my TV watching to maybe two hours a day. You have to put restrictions on yourself so here's what I watch.

Mornings, half an hour divided into 15 min. of local news and weather then 15 min. of Headline News.

Light stuff for relaxing;
Monday to Thursday, "Crossing Jordan". It's no great shakes but I like the relationship between Jordan and her father. I see similarities with my own daughters.
Fridays: "Monk"
Saturdays and Sundays: I add an hour if I am not working. I like some of the Specials on the History Channel or A&E like their production of "Attila". Today it will be their production ofAlexander the Great . Or naybe one of those British mysteries like "Inspector Frost".

I get some help from my wife because she likes "Little House" and "Touched By an Angel" both of which I can't watch. "How can you watch that crap." But she says it helps her with her English. OK why not? Hell, I watch "Crossing Jordan".

One rule I made for myself is to never watch any cable news except Headline News for 15 min. No CNN, FOX or MSNBC. If I see something important I use the World Newspaper page on the internet for the details.

In Chicago, "The Weather Channel" is a must.

How and what do the rest of you guys watch on TV.

[AntManBee]

Basically, I don't watch TV any more. Well, I do but only very rarely, and then it's only something I really really want to see, and I go to a friend to watch it. I've put my TV away because one day I just had enough of the slime oozing out of my TV set (to paraphrase Zappa). I realized I watched less and less but the box itself started to annoy me just being there radiating its "watch me! watch me!" vibes. Most of the time when I watched TV it made me feel like I was treated like a non-thinking person. Yes, TV could be so much, it has potential, but no-one seems too interested in using the potential for anything but mind-numbing bullshit. An amoeba could have come up with something intellectually more stimulating than that. There's so many more rewarding things I can do instead, like reading or whatever.

[sonic1]

SNL, Letterman, Conan, mad tv...


Leno is now banned in my house. I can't stand his little bobbing head anymore.

Mainly because I don't get cable, I only watch the late night comics.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

Zero TV; unless I'm on the road and staying in a hotel or motel, and whatever TV I watch there always convinces me that I'm not missing enough to get one. Of course, the next time The Warriors are in a playoff hunt, I'll get one for the games, assuming they still have TV by then.

[Jazzooo]

HBO: The Wire, Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Bill Mahar, the occasional movie.

Comedy Central: Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Network: The first 20 minutes of Letterman, but not religiously; Survivor; the occasional episodes of Lost, Wife Swap, and usually SNL.

Cable: for a while, we were prettyn hooked into Hardball with Chris Matthews, but now that the election is behind us, I doubt I'll get back into it.

Mostly--CNN and Headline News. ANyone else see that footage of a volcano in Iceland spewing ash and ice?

[john williams]

All I watch are a couple of arts and movie review shows, an occasional British whodunnit and that's about it.

I tend to rent or buy DVDs now as the TV is mostly rubbish. Too many Big Brother "reality" or "lifestyle" type shows for my taste. So I don't watch any commercial TV and only watch ABC (PBS equivalent) and SBS which shows foreign films and good documentaries.

[AntManBee]

A related question: Is Neil Postman's book "Amusing ourselves to death" still worth reading? Is it still relevant? It came out many years ago, but I haven't read it.

[Sergio Zamora]

Originally Posted by Bluebrew

I like some of the Specials on the History Channel or A&E like their production of "Attila". Today it will be their production ofAlexander the Great .

I love watching those history channel specials. I really hate that half of their shows are about weaponry, but I love it when they delve into stuff from, say, the middle ages downard.

I have to admit I'm a sucker for 'Cold Case Files' on A&E. I understand there is a fictional show on a network on the same subject, but I'm referring to the real deal. I love all that forensic investigation stuff, and I especially like to say the criminals get their comeuppance years after they thought they got away with it.

Aside from that, it's The Simpsons, 'Curb your Enthusiasm', 'The Wire', and a few other things here and there but not necessarily regularly. It's mostly movies, though. Lotsa flicks with a few serious ones thrown in just to balance things out.

[HLJ]

Sports and News the occasional PBS type special on Jazz or African-American History or culture.Peace and all that.

[Jimmy Cantiello]

I'll watch just about anything except for cartoons. When it comes to tv I have absolutely no standards.................

[Bluebrew]

The History Channel's "Alexander the Great" was a pretty good program.