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BS: Television
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Subject: BS: Television From: The Sandman Date: 26 Jan 16 - 02:13 AM Am I the only mudcatter who does not have or wish to own a Television? / |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: Joe Offer Date: 26 Jan 16 - 02:42 AM I'd say that many of us find better things to do than watch television, but still it's nice to have one every once in a while for important news, an occasional movie, and whatnot. I understand the average use in the US is 5 hours a day. Mine is about two hours a month. -Joe- |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: BobL Date: 26 Jan 16 - 02:47 AM Snap! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: GUEST,Musket Date: 26 Jan 16 - 03:27 AM Broadens your horizons Dick. Answers a few questions on here too 😂 |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: MGM·Lion Date: 26 Jan 16 - 03:31 AM Valerie & I did without one for most of our nearly ½C marriage. When she was missing for a while in China after Tienenman, a kind friend gave me an old B&W set to keep up with the news, & I took to The Bill (in those days a nice half-hour separate episode police-procedural) especially as a taker-off-of-anxiety resource. My 2nd wife Emma & I share an interest in sport, and both like police soaps [Bill, Softly Softly, Frost, Endeavour, Vera, & such] for mild recreation, so we keep a big set for watching those. Nowadays I can't read much by artificial light without a lot of strain, & the telly helps to fill the evening. Old age, alas, brings the need for such compromises and accommodations! But power to your abstinence, Dick. There are indeed, while one retains one's youth & vigour, many far more creative & satisfactory ways of using one's time & energies. ≈M≈ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: The Sandman Date: 26 Jan 16 - 03:35 AM Broadens your horizons, not wishing to be impertinent, but perhaps you would be good enough to explain exactly how, and what advantage[ horizon broadening] it would have over reading a book listening to the radio getting info from the computer. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: The Sandman Date: 26 Jan 16 - 03:36 AM That is understandable, MGM |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: Backwoodsman Date: 26 Jan 16 - 03:37 AM There's nothing wrong with television per se. The secret is in being very selective in the choice of programmes one watches. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: GUEST,LynnH Date: 26 Jan 16 - 03:44 AM My last 'idiot box' gave up the ghost 36 years ago. Since then I've of course occasionally watched tele programmes but generally I don't miss it. For the one or two programmes a week which interested me I didn't think the expenditure to be justified. Now I catch up on old comedy series and documentaries on YouTube and I'm satisfied. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: GUEST,Shimrod Date: 26 Jan 16 - 04:14 AM Oh come on! There's some great stuff on telly! I'm loving the beebs adaptation of 'War and Peace' and Richard Fortey's new series on islands and evolution is terrific (I bet a certain 'starry pete' isn't watching it - he might learn something he doesn't want to know!). Sometimes you catch a real gem. Near the end of last year I watched, fascinated, a programme in which team of scientists 'dissected' an extremely realistic looking (dead) Tyrannosaurus Rex! Power tools were required and there was gallons of blood and stomach contents etc. It was a brilliant and novel way of teaching its audience about how dinosaurs evolved and how they relate to creatures - like birds, for example - alive today. And then there was another, more recent, programme, presented by Alice Roberts, about woolly mammoths and what we are learning about them through studying their remains buried in the permafrost of Siberia. It's not all about evolution and palaeontology, of course! There's plenty of drama and comedy and documentaries covering every subject from history to contemporary social problems. And then there's endless repeats of 'Top Gear' ... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: MGM·Lion Date: 26 Jan 16 - 04:28 AM As BWM says, selectiveness is the key. There is nothing much more depressing than going into one of those homes where the bloody box is always wittering away in the background even if nobody is paying the remotest attention to it. And, yes, I can think of at least two households among my present acquaintance where this is the case. ≈M≈ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: Richard Bridge Date: 26 Jan 16 - 05:32 AM I am following the re-runs of Star Trek DS9 (so that's 5 hours per week) and "Endeavour" (the prequels to the "Inspector Morse" series) so that makes 7 hours per week. I used to watch the news (BBC) most evenings and Question Time but both have become such hard-core propaganda for the most dishonest right wing factors that I no longer do that, and get most factual information online. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: Steve Shaw Date: 26 Jan 16 - 05:37 AM Backwoodsman and Shimrod are spot on. If you don't want to have a telly, all power to your elbow. But try not to exude a faint air of superiority over it. There is nothing especially superior about not having a telly. Apart from anything else, if you don't have one you don't know what you're missing, and not everything on telly is designed to deprave, corrupt, rot your brain or waste your time. Anyway, Liverpool matches are often on the telly. As tonight for example. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: GUEST,HiLo Date: 26 Jan 16 - 05:44 AM We do have one but seldom watch it. I enjoy radio much more, you can do other things while listening to radio. I also hate visiting with people who have the telly blaring away all during a visit, including during a meal. We just decline those invitations now. But there are occasional good things on , so, as I say, we keep a small one. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker Date: 26 Jan 16 - 05:48 AM My old mum in her 80s spends most of her time in the house on her own. Her telly is 'good company' and, apart from our daily phone calls and her regular trips to the shops, a lifeline to the greater outside world. Dick - would you rather she got a bleedin' budgie...!!!??? 😜 |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: Steve Shaw Date: 26 Jan 16 - 06:44 AM The telly goes on for a couple of hours every night, but we're not both watching it all the time. Mrs Steve watches a lot of those hospital dramas. I've had two hospital stays in the last couple of years and I can tell you that the Holby one has more gorgeous lady doctors and nurses in it than the rest of the NHS put together. I can't watch any soaps though my parents have them on all the time, but then they're in their late 80s/early 90s. I like footie on the telly I must admit, and I've just watched a cracking good series about the history of Spain and another about ancient Egypt. I've got one recording about islands, presented by Richard Fortey, a fabulous man. And then there's Attenborough. A positive cornucopia, there for the taking. Are the creationists allowing the yanks to watch Life On Earth on DVD yet? :-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: Sandra in Sydney Date: 26 Jan 16 - 06:56 AM I've never owned a TV, & I don't go to movies as I'm not a watcher. I love radio & books & the net. I quite often don't follow youtube links friends send. But there are times I watch a whole series of youtube clips. We finally got a TV when I was 14 & in the 10 years till I left home I watched so little that if I wanted to see something the rest of the family didn't, we often watched that! I spent most of my time in my bedroom pretending to study & listening to the radio & doing a good job of teenage isolating. sandra |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker Date: 26 Jan 16 - 07:10 AM If I say I come from a family of cyclists who never owned a car. That I have never wanted to be burdened by car ownership, or even take driving lessons [apart from when I had to as conditions of employment for 2 jobs which both folded before I needed apply for a driving test] ..well 'normal' folks just tend to regard me as a suspiciously pitiful crackpot... Now supposing I kinda feel a similar vibe when I hear otherwise intelligent folks boasting all sanctimoniously about TV ownership.... 😜 |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: gnu Date: 26 Jan 16 - 07:40 AM ≈M≈... I have a big LCD in my living room hooked to my laptop and I sit 6' away so it's great for reading the newspaper or whatever. I am presently 2' from a 32" LCD as I type. Same deal. As for TV, I watch some sports and some news and I record late night comedy talk shows for later viewing. Documentaries are required viewing... science, history and the like. I suppose I watch TV about 15 hours per week and that goes to 20 hours during NFL playoff season. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: GUEST,Shimrod Date: 26 Jan 16 - 07:43 AM "Now supposing I kinda feel a similar vibe when I hear otherwise intelligent folks boasting all sanctimoniously about TV ownership..." There's nothing sanctimonious or boastful about it! There's are some excellent programmes on the telly - which I personally enjoy and learn a lot from. I also find them a spur to learning more. For example, the new BBC adaptation of 'War and Peace' has prompted me to read a bit more about Napoleon's Russian campaigns. Is it possible, do you suppose, that some people without TVs might be described as "sanctimonious"? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: Steve Shaw Date: 26 Jan 16 - 07:47 AM God yes! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: MGM·Lion Date: 26 Jan 16 - 08:04 AM I am, BTW, Steve, much looking forward to the Liverpool v Stoke 2nd leg match tonite. I shall be surprised if Liverpool do not hang on to, & probably even enhance, their one away-goal 1st leg advantage. But, as that guy in the Shaw* play sez: "You Never Can Tell"! - which is of course what will make the game worth watching, even in a properly constituted household like ours, consisting of one Chelsea [Emma] & one Arsenal [me] supporter. ≈M≈ *no relation, I take it?! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker Date: 26 Jan 16 - 08:23 AM My all time favourite genre of movies and TV is the 'Western'. It is a vitally visual genre of big landscapes and skies.. Radio and Books, just can't compete with the medium of TV. .. and although I live in the West of England.. somehow, looking out my window just aint the same as Cinemascope vies of the American West !!! [even though it's mostly filmed in Canada for finance & tax reasons these days...] |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: Acorn4 Date: 26 Jan 16 - 08:38 AM I'll catch up on TV watching when I'm in the nursing home. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: Rapparee Date: 26 Jan 16 - 09:39 AM We have four televisions: two downstairs and two up. The two up are flat panels: there's a 19 inch one in my wife's office and a 34 inch one on the wall in the dining room. My wife "watches" Deutsche Welle in the evening as she works; we had the "big" TV on one morning last week to catch the Weather Channel's reportage on the blizzard on the East Coast. That was the first time in a month or two we've used the bigger set. As far as I know the ones downstairs, both CRTs, haven't been used in literally a couple of years. That TV viewing poll group paid me five bucks to participate a couple years ago. Most of the times were that none of the four TVs were turned on, but I seem to remember following a news story then and so there was some crumb tossed to the company. When I/we do watch, it's very, very, very selective. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 26 Jan 16 - 09:49 AM We (my Beautiful Wife and I) own a TV--but not basically for TV programing! We watch movie DVDs, which we get from Netflix, maybe two or three per week. The BW will occasionally watch TV for such things as political "debates", so-called. No accounting for tastes. And inauguration speeches, where she will now and then succeed in dragging me in front of the tube. She can't get me there for the Oscars. Someone may ask, "Don't you watch the news?" We get our news fix from the radio (NPR).
I'd guess I don't average watching more than two hours a year of TV as TV. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: Steve Shaw Date: 26 Jan 16 - 09:59 AM I'll be watching the game on my iPhone using my mobile Sky Sports app and my Roberts Travelpad Bluetooth speaker, which was a freebie, a way of watching that I enjoy a lot. I also watch a lot of telly on the iPad. I find iPlayer a better experience that way. That little speaker is pure joy. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: MGM·Lion Date: 26 Jan 16 - 10:22 AM We shall watch on the big flatscreen in our living-room which we found as a great bargain offer in Tesco's 3 or 4 years back, snip at £100, which has performed us great service since. Important thing is that we and you will be watching together, here in the Global Village. Come back McLuhan, all is forgiven... ≈M≈ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker Date: 26 Jan 16 - 10:23 AM I used to be an avid cinema goer. 2 or 3 times a week. But that was before mobile phones and extortionate ticket prices. Now, the 47" Hi Def telly, hifi headphones [and occasional 3D glasses] more than suffice for a stress free viewing experience. The wife usually goes to bed soon after 10.00pm, leaving me to switch between freeview recordings, or Sky & Amazon Prime Movies on Demand, or pop in a blu-ray. Switch off all the lights.. sit back, and enjoy... Not forgetting the big bottle of sugar free tesco cloudy lemonade.... 😎 |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: akenaton Date: 26 Jan 16 - 10:32 AM I think it's slightly more damaging than the internet, providing that you don't use facebook. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: The Sandman Date: 26 Jan 16 - 01:02 PM I asked a question. I dont mind what anyone else does. I Certainly would not force punk folk rockers 80 year old mum to have a budgie. it seems like its just me and Lynne H, possibly acorn 4, Who do not have televisions or dont want one. I have never made a claim to being superior, if anyone detects whiff of superiority, its not intended. I also appreciate having the choice of being able to go to a pub and not watch a television, or occasionally to watch one, but I would not be happy if that choice was removed either way, it is particularly annoying if you are trying to have a music session and the tv is left on even if the sound is off, I always try and sit so i cannot see it., but thats just my opinion. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: GUEST,Pete from seven stars link Date: 26 Jan 16 - 02:06 PM Some people just like to be combative , GSs. I see shimrod and Steve are getting withdrawal symptoms and looking for a fight again. I am pretty sure I have seen more evolutionist stuff than they have creationist , and in all the threads on the subject , which only evolutionists have initiated here, just about the only evidence they offer is appeal to numbers and authority. I read war and peace a long time ago , was looking forward to the series , but ceased watching it when I realised the beeb were doing their best to turn it into a sex romp at every opportunity. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: Steve Shaw Date: 26 Jan 16 - 02:30 PM Jesus, I'll have to start watching it then! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: MGM·Lion Date: 26 Jan 16 - 02:36 PM Yes, I gathered that from the pre-publicity, Pete, and have refrained from watching. I have in fact learned over long years not to watch screen or stage adaptations of novels of which I am particularly fond. They never get then right. Esp, as here, when the work of the much-adulated but IMO absolute·kiss·of·death Andrew Davies, who, as I once said in a review (had to watch that time coz was working) suffers from the dire delusion that he can write better dialogue than Jane Austen and create better plots that Anthony Trollope -- as if! The only exceptions were the much more sensitive adaptations of David Nokes, who made an astonishingly good fist of Richardson's Clarissa, which I should have thought the most intractable to adapt; he really caught the atmosphere of extreme deviousness on which that great work turns. & Dickens, sensitively adapted, can work now and again -- I recall a reasonable BBC Our Mutual Friend nearly 20 years ago. ≈M≈ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: keberoxu Date: 26 Jan 16 - 02:42 PM I don't have a television in my apartment. I'm old enough to recall television BC, Before Cable [TV], from my childhood; the house I was raised in, viewing was very selective, so only a few hours a week were viewed. Traveling as an adult, I have checked in to enough hotels to notice what television is like these days. I can use a few of those buttons on the remote control, enough to look at a channel with the sound turned completely off for a few seconds before surfing to the next channel. All these years on, I have viewed more films in the privacy of a hotel room, on cable TV, than I have in the cinema (which I avoid anyhow). The Weather Channel is entertaining and sometimes they even get the forecast right. But then I don't have a computer at home either, this post is coming from the public computer station at the local library branch. Superiority? The opposite, I have to admit; I just have a horror of all this stuff that is new to me. Calculators, computer programs, cable subscription bundles, telephones that take your photograph, .... one of these days, though, I ought to learn how to cut and paste, and maybe then I will stop flunking blue clicky school at Mudcat. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: GUEST,MikeL2 Date: 26 Jan 16 - 02:43 PM hi GSS <"I also appreciate having the choice of being able to go to a pub and not watch a television, or occasionally to watch one, but I would not be happy if that choice was removed either way, it is particularly annoying if you are trying to have a music session and the tv is left on even if the sound is off, I always try and sit so i cannot see it., but thats just my opinion."> In this day of simple TV recording there is nothing to stop anyone from recording a program and going to the pub. I do it regularly. But that is my choice. I appreciate yours is different. I agree with your point if you are having a music session and TV is on it can be very infuriating and IMHO ignorant on the part of the host/publican. Mind you I have a 2nd home in Spain and in many Spanish bars and restaurants it is not unusual to have three or four TVs running with as many different programs on at the same time - usually football. Over in Spain it is the normal thing and is not through anyone being ignorant. Of course there are bars where live music is played and the people watch and listen appreciatively. But they take some finding. Cheers Mike |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: GUEST,Shimrod Date: 26 Jan 16 - 05:29 PM "I read war and peace a long time ago , was looking forward to the series , but ceased watching it when I realised the beeb were doing their best to turn it into a sex romp at every opportunity." Drat! I seem to have missed the sex romps. But then, perhaps the term 'sex romp' means something different to a fundamentalist? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: Steve Shaw Date: 26 Jan 16 - 05:38 PM Anyway, Liverpool did it. Deservedly. The Stoke goal was blatantly offside. Justice done. What having a telly is all about. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: akenaton Date: 26 Jan 16 - 05:56 PM There does not seem to be any decent drama on TV anymore it's all disgusting so called comedy, celebrity parades or carefully orchestrated "talent shows"......what happened to all the wonderful plays, documentaries and really good series that BBC used to serve up? I remember the workmen at the firm where I served my apprenticeship arguing and discussing the Wednesday Play or politics from Panorama. I wonder if they discus who showed the most flesh or swore the most often on Big Brother now? Comedy has become a "sick joke" As a society, I think we have regressed not evolved. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: MGM·Lion Date: 26 Jan 16 - 05:58 PM Yay -- well done, Liverpool! Emma hopes Everton get thru tomorrow, as she fancies an all-Merseyside needle-final. Easy, myself. No London clubs left in, only those pesky impudent Lankies. Don't know what things are coming to! ≈M≈ Don't agree re offside, btw. Just about level as I saw it. & no flags raised, nor no disputes from any player. Can't really have been as 'blatant' as you claim, can it now, Steve? Honest now! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: Bat Goddess Date: 26 Jan 16 - 06:11 PM I have a television -- an old one, not a flatscreen. I use it to watch DVDs and videotapes. I haven't watched scheduled television since 1983. That was pre-cable and we only got three stations. I was watching mostly movies, "The Muppets", Jacque Cousteau documentaries, and "Masterpiece Theatre". I was in the middle of watching "Brideshead Revisited" on Masterpiece Theatre when I found, no matter how many times that episode was scheduled during the week, that I just couldn't find time to watch it. I threw up my arms in disgust (figuratively) and both Tom and I stopped watching television completely. More recently I've binge-watched several series on DVD -- "White Collar", "Boston Legal", "Big Bang Theory", "Rosemary & Thyme". Much nicer that way. I've never watched sports because I have no interest in sports and neither did Tom (or my first husband, for that matter). I find televisions in pubs and restaurants to be really really annoying, even if I'm trying not to pay any attention to them. (Just the onscreen movement distracts from conversations.) Linn |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: Steve Shaw Date: 26 Jan 16 - 06:32 PM Watch it again, Michael. You did say you watched telly because of your diminishing eyesight. Carry on like this and you could qualify as a ref. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: GUEST,Musket Date: 27 Jan 16 - 02:25 AM If telly contains sick jokes these days it must be going backwards. I thought sick jokes ended when creatures such as Bernard Manning were taken off the telly? Mrs Musket and I record a few things and unwind in front of them later at night. She invariably works 13 hours a day so we don't eat til 8.00pm, leaving just enough time for, (at present..) Endeavour, Silent Witness, War & Peace, and when I'm out strutting me stuff she watches that midwife jobby. Right now we are out skiing. Someone asked if we get any UK telly over here. I have to be honest, we spend a few weeks a year here in Tignes and have never turned the telly on yet. OK, we watch Ski Sunday on my iPad.... They are recording the men's downhill from here later this week. I'll be the grinning idiot stood behind them as they commentate. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: GUEST,LynnH Date: 27 Jan 16 - 03:28 AM Most of my friends are 'Telly-free zones' or, if not, they only switch the thing on if they're ill and confined to bed. Generally, we all consider that we've better things to do with our time - music, art, dance, reading good books, cultivating friendships etc.etc.etc. But feeling some sort of superiority 'cos we're telly-free? Forget it!! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: GUEST,Mr Red on holiday Date: 27 Jan 16 - 03:52 AM I never owned a TV until last year when I bought a portable. But I have owned 5 video recorders, & 4 TV cards for PC's in the last 20 years. Like all things: to avoid anything that is not harmful, completely, is extreme. TV is a time watser, but then lying on the beach using up your risk factor for melanoma is a time waster, but there are people with jobs that don't allow them to switch off fully day to day and swapping a week of oxytocin for all that cortisol is beneficial to life. Personbally I found other ways to top up on oxytocin but whatever works for you - like ceilidh dancing. TV is mental wallpaper mostly, but it can dilute that cortisol if you have too much. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: MGM·Lion Date: 27 Jan 16 - 04:06 AM I used of course to have to ref, Steve, back in my long·since teaching days. Alas, I just could not keep up with the play, not being all that mobile nowadays. ≈M≈ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: akenaton Date: 27 Jan 16 - 04:17 AM I think Bernard might have been a bit subtle for some people. The great writers like Bleasdale, Loach, Peter McDougall,Dennis Potter, Mike Leigh....made ordinary folk think and discuss, the shit which is doled out now is produced with the opposite intention. Most of my neighbours no longer watch TV other than for news. The prancing grinning hyenas of TV "comedy" lack wit or decency. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: GUEST,Musket Date: 27 Jan 16 - 04:29 AM "I think Bernard might have been a bit subtle for some people." -Akenaton. A quick Google of Bernard Manning "jokes" "Why do nig nogs smell? So the blind can hate them as well." "What's the difference between a nig nog and a Paki? A nig nog takes the plates out before pissing in the sink." Yeah, far too subtle for an ignoramus like me. I obviously lack Akenaton's sense of humour. Mind you, how someone can say they don't watch it yet comment on the quality is beyond me. I think an unhealthy dose of prejudice helps eh? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: akenaton Date: 27 Jan 16 - 04:36 AM You seem to be a stranger to irony. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Television From: GUEST,Musket Date: 27 Jan 16 - 04:41 AM I rest my case |
