I tend to treat the television like radio, and don't just sit and watch it, with few exceptions. I was transfixed, standing in the middle of the room watching the World Trade Center explosions. TV brought in the information more completely than the radio could have. The trick was to turn it off when it started the endless repetitions.

I had a running feud going with the cable company and when I moved last winter I didn't reconnect. I've never gotten around to putting in satellite and don't miss much of it. Except the British mysteries and biographies on A&E and the old movies on a couple of channels. Basically, I have too much other stuff to do, think about, and watch (I borrow movies from the public library). I do miss the DIY programs (but I'm so busy doing it myself I don't have time now to watch someone else doing it!).

We have lots of tvs in the house; it just kind of happened, it wasn't intentional. My kids as of this xmas have small black and white tvs in their rooms, but they know I still have veto power. Around here, they're very useful in bad weather. It's the most reliable weather news around, when you're huddled in the hall with blankets and pillows as the wind and rain roar past the house in tornado alley. The kids will have these into the future--as demonstrated, they're useful for a number of reasons. I watch the news in the morning on a small black and white on the counter next to the stove. My son listens to his for his after school programs as he plays with legos. My daughter doesn't turn it on much at all. We've simply learned to ignore it, not turn it on a lot or to put it in it's proper place, in the background (and I like the local Public Radio lineup on KERA, so I listen to that all weekend).

I don't care for the public televisons either, and we have one in the lobby of the library where I work. Students have figured out to bring in programmable remote controls and now bypass the locking device on the front of the tv. Some real trash gets turned on down there.

SRS