Do you watch TV? (Are you sure?)

[dreamshark]

A few days ago during the aimless chatter after a  work meeting, my boss said primly, "I don't watch TV."

"But wait!" we all cried. "You were just talking about watching Scandal!"

"But I watch that on Netflix," came the reply.

What does it even mean to "watch TV" anymore? If you never watch broadcast TV but watch Scandal on Netflix, that still seems like "watching TV" to me. But what if if you use your TV only as a monitor to watch rented movies? What if you watch TV shows on your laptop? What if you stream YouTube videos to your TV?  If your "television" is an LCD monitor with inputs for antennae, cable, DVD, thumb drives and ethernet, is it still a TV? Even if it does have an increasingly obsolete built-in TV receiver? What does anything mean any more?

I predict that within 15 years there will be a new generation that is baffled by the idea of a single-purpose device that could be only be used to watch a tragically limited number of programs broadcast at a specific time and place from a central location. Who on earth would want something like that?

Comments

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Yes! At least the more affluent young people today are already more familiar than not with a much wider range of options than the limited broadcast tv we had growing up.

I haven't had a tv for some time. I watch streaming netflix and DVDs and visit the websites of abc and cbs etc to catch more current shows.

[laurel]

I know that several years ago now already there were some people who would proudly say they "don't watch TV" only to reveal that they did sometimes watch movies or even TV shows on DVD. They'd say it as if somehow that was different and special or something, not just watching whatever was on or whatnot.

I think most people these days say "TV" when they mean television shows no matter how they watch them (streaming, DVD, broadcast, on a DVR, whatever), but the lines really do continue to blur.

[mplsfish.livejournal.com]

I hadn't got as far as having a definition of tv. I don't like to see commercials. They remind me how dumb most of america is. I do watch a lot of shows and movies. I gave up watching anything at all for a couple years. But then I had Osce and spent a lot of time sitting while nursing. There is only so much radio I can take. And then, with a hyper toddler is is handy to have a tv and vcr. I still kept him away from comemrcial tv. He is too vulnerable to the suggestion and I didn't want to hear the whining for stuff he saw there.

While spending lat week with my dad I noticed a tv on, pretty much every where we went. My aunts house, every bar and resteraunt, my moms house even. Around here I quickly learn to avoid places that have one on all the time. Including peoples houses. I don't seem to have the ability to not look that other people seem to have.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

I agree with mplsfish about the commercials. When I forget how much I hate to watch commercial TV, I *LITERALLY* watch this commercial as a reminder.

http://youtu.be/g1GTTDRT6fo

I watch lots of TV, nearly all of it pre-recorded and available in some pausable fashion, the same as your boss. I would not like to go back to the old ways, but I still know that I watch a lot of television.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

For the record, I don't have cable and almost never watch broadcast TV. I frequently watch movies and TV episodes from DVD or streaming from one source or another. I refer to this as "watching TV" because I am literally sitting in front of the device I still think of as "my television" and watching it.

Very rarely I watch a TV episode on my computer monitor. I do not refer to this as "watching TV."

[quadong.livejournal.com]

Becca doesn't knows what the difference between a TV show and a movie is nor what a "channel" could be.