Television.

Most of you, dear readers, know me. That is probably at least part of the reason that you read this here blog. So it is no news to any of you that I'm not much of a TV watcher. Yes, I have my weaknesses, and I try my best to miss as few Jeopardy matches as possible, but in general, I don't follow a lot of programs or anything like that. Hell, for the last three months I have been getting by just fine without any type of television in my little basement hovel.

Having said that, I find myself in a very interesting position: for the first time in my life, I have a television in my living space that actually gets channels. I'd say that I have cable, but basic network television, ten Spanish channels, the Discovery Channel, and Sci-Fi network hardly qualifies as cable. Still, this is the first time that, from the comfort of my own bed or desk chair, I can switch on the television and be certain that anything that is being broadcast at that moment will be completely visible on my television set.

So here's the thing: now that I have so much of this television, I realize just how awful television has become. In cruising channels to test the capabilities of my new-fangled television connectivity, I happened upon an episode of WifeSwap. All I can say is wow. It's not new to me or anything like that, I've even seen bits and pieces before, but man, I think it's gotten worse. It didn't help, of course, that nearly every other network that I stumbled across was showing some form of reality programming. I realize that there is wonderful and amazing programming out there on "real" cable (which I'd have to consider just for The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and The Soup) but I really wonder what the hell happened to television. I wrote a seminar paper this past semester on how the computer is altering the entire concept of television, and I'm going to be so bold as to say this: if I could pay a reasonable fee to get a DVD in the mail once a week with whatever programming I really wanted to watch, I'd never watch live TV again. Think about it... if you could subscribe to a certain number of television shows, kind of like a podcast, would you give a damn about having other options? I mean, these days, I catch probably seventy percent of my television watching either via internet streaming or else from the purchase of a box set.

I realize I'm biased, and I'm sure if I had a bit more "real" programming to choose from, rather than reality programming, this might well be a completely different posting. But in the meantime, I am going to flip on a DVD and ignore all the other crap that might show up on my TV screen.