December 3, 2009

All hail the boob tube.. and us boobs who watch it?


Yesterday morning during my drive from home to doggie day care to work, the morning crew on radio were playing one of their call-in games and this one caught my attention.

Their question - men have on average 105 of these, and regularly use only 16; what is it?

My absolute favourite answer from a caller was "IQ points", but alas that wasn't what they were looking for.

The answer? TV channels.

I don't have 105 channels. I may have 30 or so, and probably regularly watch seven - CNN, CBC News, Comedy Network, assorted shows on the major networks, like Bones, Desperate Housewives, Cougar Town, NCIS, The New Adventures of Old Christine.

When I was a kid there were three networks, and we all followed the same shows - MASH, Dallas, Cosby. And maneuvered to stay up late and watch more. Now there's a bazillion channels, we have TV's in every room, and NOT A DAMN THING TO WATCH.

Last night I channel surfed from top to bottom about nine times and then turned the tube off. What the hell is Eastwick? How many CSI's are there? Who are these people? I wound up reading a book; how outdated is that?

One of the channels I do get, A&E, was showing a tacky-thon of back-to-back episodes of I Didn't Know I was Pregnant. Yep, it's a real show, and yep, our world is coming to a swift and furious end.

So the primetime TV menu is crap, therefore we are all watching less TV, the networks are on a downward spiral, and in my humble opinion they totally deserve it.

Then this morning on the internet, aka my TV replacement, I saw an article about how as much as we talk about the decline of television in the western world, TV is actually the primary window to education, opportunity, and women's rights in the third world and is on an upswing there.

Good stuff to hear, and much as I admire that noble use, my immediate concern is still not damn thing to watch in a world of Jon and Kate marathons and Accidentally on Purpose.. really, people, that's the best you can do?

1 comments:

Brenda Dumont said...

I wholly agree. I watch Law & Order reruns but can't figure out who's on first with all the spin-offs and I'm hooked on Grey's Anatomy. (Sorry, a character flaw???) And I buy BBC Series DVDs and Charles Dickens DVDs just to have something to watch on my TV. The rest is a wasteland.

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