Member-only story
“You only watch 5 TV shows a week?”
Back in the 1990s, I realized I had a problem. At the time, I was watching an average of 40 hours of television per week. I generally had 1–3 primetime shows to watch each night, plus the TV was on for background viewing the rest of the time. Our standard mode of operation was to get home from work and turn the TV on while prepping dinner and unwinding. At the time, The Sci-Fi Channel was the go-to viewing choice since we knew we could always find something we could tolerate watching on there (please note: This was prior to all the “reality” TV shows and non-sci-fi content). We would record many of our primetime shows on VHS so we could watch them later that night, the next night, or on the weekend. Most weekends were spent catching up on primetime shows we had missed viewing during the week or that came on at times that conflicted with other shows we were watching.
Eventually, most likely while I was on my 1-hour commute from work, I realized how much TV viewing I was doing each week. My active viewing was only about 8 hours a week, but my passive viewing was significantly more. I define active viewing as sitting down and not doing anything else while watching a show. During active viewing, I’m actively paying attention to the entire show and only doing something else during a commercial break. Passive viewing, on the other hand, is when the TV is on in the room, but I’m not really…
