Facts about the old Telly

Alright alright ... I'm slow. I know it. It's been my downfall as a blogger. I'm not on top of things as I should be. What truly matters though is that I'm here and I'm blogging now. So buckle up here we go ...

I mentioned in my previous blogs things I hope to cover. The first off was the quest of Andrew and I to get rid of cable! What that you say? This sounds proposterous? We must be stupid? Well you're right, we are stupid and TV is the reason why. So a few days ago Andrew and I began a quest to get rid of our cable. I'm going to try to keep this brief, since I know that none of you read long blogs. But I'm going to cover today why we wanted to get rid of cable. The next blog will be about the process of getting rid of it and why it's horrible. Finally the third blog will be things you can do after getting rid of it ... or more realistically how to limit TV time.

I'd been feeling discontent with my life one weekend. I spent the weekend doing nothing really of consequence. I felt like I had done some good things, but that people my age just had to be doing something cooler. I explored this thought further with our bartender out at Elephant and Castle and some of our friends and found out two things:

1.) I had watched far too much TV that weekend really.
2.) Everyone else my age typically does that as well.

The decision to get of cable began slowly creeping into our heads at this point and reached a head after Andrew and I spent an hour one night watching Flavor of Love on VH1. The show is so stupid and left Andrew and I asking, "Why do we care about who Flavor Flav (a bona fide idiot) dates and why is TV so lame?"

TV has overtaken our lives. Don't believe me ... check this:

1.) 66.3% of American Households have Cable. This is some form of at least basic cable on up.

2.) The cable industry makes over 95 billion dollars a year in terms of advertising and prices.

3.) Average price of cable is $41.17 dollars per month. This is absurd.

4.) 42% of those under the age of thirty say they feel watching TV is a bad use of their time, but of that 42% ... 72% say they plan to do nothing about watching too much.

Only a few more:

5.) The average child (age 8-21) watches 28 hours of cable a week, sees 20,000 thirty second commercials a year, and watches just under 1,500 hours of cable a year.

6.) The average child has 32.5 minutes of meaningful conversation a week with parents.

7.) If you live to be 75 years old, you will have spent anywhere between 7-10 years of your life watching TV.

The point is, TV is slowly taking over. No wonder either ... it's incredibly relaxing. Nothing is better than putting up your feet and laughing a little. You relax your mind. But that's exactly the problem, as I'll explore next time. There are now more voices telling you what to think and why. And we're just kind of believing it instead of critically thinking about it. So Andrew and I realized that we want those 7-10 years of our lives. Or at least 4 of them. We can get rid of cable and do more constructive things with our lives ... read, write, or talk to people.

Chew on that until I give you some reasoning as to how Cable is influencing your thinking ... without you even knowing.